


Kigakan

by wolftraptobaltimore (ogidni)



Series: Carnal Knowledge [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Case Fic, EXTREME SEXUAL TENSION, M/M, Nightmares, Sexual Tension, Slow Build, Slow Burn, art and poetry and culture etc, killing can be sexy, lot of stuff about the dc/baltimore area
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-18 17:09:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 27,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9394979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ogidni/pseuds/wolftraptobaltimore
Summary: In which Will, faced with no other choice in a disturbing case, asks Hannibal for assistance:“...kill him…” The first utterance was muddled by the crackle of the fire behind them.“I want you to kill him.”





	1. ichi

**Author's Note:**

> This will be multi-chapter...not exactly sure how many yet, but a bunch of them are already written, so stay tuned. Will become increasingly explicit. 
> 
> Two good friends writing about two good friends, as always. Please drop us a note and let us know what you think! 
> 
> Many thanks for reading.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been months since Hannibal successfully framed Chilton for the Chesapeake Ripper murders, and Will has done his best to stay away from him in hopes of rebuilding his life. But when a killer starts leaving gruesome memorials in southwestern D.C., Will begins to suspect that only Hannibal's special brand of problem solving can put an end to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will be multi-chapter...not exactly sure how many yet, but a bunch of them are already written, so stay tuned. Will become increasingly explicit.
> 
> Two good friends writing about two good friends, as always. Please drop us a note and let us know what you think!
> 
> Many thanks for reading.

Will’s day started in DC in a back alley of Anacostia where a wired skeleton hung, draped over the side of an abandoned dumpster. This alone would not be the business of the FBI and certainly beneath Jack Crawford’s pay grade had it been an ordinary skeleton, but it was at least ten times the size of a normal human and comprised of an unknown number of bodies.

 

It was first discovered by some well-known urban culture blogger and touted as a guerilla-style art installation. University students and news crews soon descended on the crime scene before they even knew it should be higher profile than an average case of public vandalism. A med student from Georgetown gave the news crews a better breaking story when he revealed the macabre reality of the “Specter of Anacostia.”

 

“This pile-o-bones has been sitting here for at least two days before anybody found it. Add that to the running total and you get three days exposed to the elements.” Will could hear Jimmy Price talking to Jack somewhere behind him by a few feet.

 

“I’d say we’re lucky nobody dismantled it for the scrap metal,” Zeller added. “Area like this? The wire would have been worth it for most.”

 

Will did his best to tune them out. He approached the amalgamated skeleton with a few steps before backing away thoughtfully like a photographer trying to achieve the right focal length. He stopped with his weight on his back heel and his front toe pointed up towards the top of the dumpster. This was where it felt most quiet in the chaos of noise and flashing lights. The exhaled cloud of his breath condensed in front of him and gave him a blank slate to reconstruct the crime.

 

“I assembled this whole piece in one night,” Will spoke to no one in particular, “…in situ. There was a plan for all of this – nothing short of perfection.” Jack shoved his hands deeper in his pockets and cleared whatever crowd remained with a booming volley of forceful threats. Every police official and agent who remained turned their attention to Will apart from Zeller and Price who continued with their work taking pictures and knowing that Jack would debrief them when they returned to the FBI crime labs.

 

“This is a life’s work come to fruition so everyone can see what has been unseen until now. No security cameras. This place and its people have been abandoned a very long time ago. But it’s never been hard for me to find work here.”

 

Will took a few steps back – snapped from a trance – and grabbed a clipboard from Zeller, who protested, “ _ rude, much _ .” Meanwhile, Will was rude enough not to care. He reconvened with Jack while flipping through the pages.

 

“Our bone collector,” Will whispered conspiratorially as he leaned towards Jack, “must be familiar with the area. He’s been doing this for years and clearly has a distaste for whoever his victims are. The first place I’d start looking is – is any kind of service worker with a route that runs through this main street,” Will pointed at the map displayed on his borrowed clipboard.

 

In an even lower voice, Will continued, “That means local authorities as well, Jack. You know as well as I do that our profession isn’t exactly free of its own stray souls and black sheep.” Will winced internally, knowing that he was describing himself in many ways.

 

Jack, for his part, seemed to consider Will’s insight. Will knew he was mulling the idea over because he leaned back and stuck his chin out a little more than usual. These gestures paired with crossed arms were hallmarks of a Jack Crawford private brainstorming session.

 

Irritated, Will pointed to the FBI-issued Chevy Tahoe they had arrived in, “You know, I could wait in the car if we’re done with this case for today.”

 

Jack regarded him with a slow look that immediately sent Will reeling. “I don’t expect you to understand this, Graham, but there are certain steps that need to be carried out behind the scenes of your style of…investigation. You think you can get the chief of police to turn over his personnel records and city contract details faster than I can? Be my guest, but until then, perhaps it’s best if you go  _ wait in the car _ .”

 

Will nodded remorsefully and walked towards the car, returning Zeller’s clipboard on his way.

 

“Someone got too uppity with senior boss-man,” Zeller noted with blatant amusement.

 

Price just raised his eyebrows and let out a low whistle before hurrying away from a conflict he suspected might arise between Will and his partner.

 

After having been publicly dressed down by Jack for the umpteenth time in his career, Will was less than anxious to start another scene to distract from what he already knew was a neglected crime scene.

 

It didn’t stop him from lightly quipping back, “Wonder where Freddie Lounds is. Noticed you were looking.”

 

He didn’t linger to see if his comment had hit its mark, just climbed into the passenger seat of the pristine black SUV and drank the last of his coffee. There was grit in it and it had long since turned cold, but it was grounding.

 

\---

 

“Easier to look at than the last one, huh?” Price patted Will on the shoulder as he joined him in the medical examination room. “Twenty-five bodies in total. Every piece accounted for and let me tell you, it was one hell of a jigsaw puzzle. There are missing teeth - a stray phalanx or two - but considering your victim profile, I wouldn’t be surprised if those were all natural occurrences.”

 

“Maybe you’ll get lucky though, huh?” Zeller called out from the next room over where he was hunched over a computer keyboard with a stack of handwritten notes. Obviously, their barbed verbal exchanges from earlier that morning had not been forgotten. Zeller was likely cataloging all the abnormalities they had found on each bone, and even Will had to admit, the man was admirably thorough.

 

“Do you have any idea how the bones may have been transported?” Will took his glasses out of the front pocket of his plaid shirt and put them. “May I?” He gestured at Zeller’s notes and only took them once the other had taken note of the page he was on and signaled Will could look with a wave of his hand.

 

“You think you have a tough job, we’re going to spend the next day and a half sorting through which of these marks were caused postmortem and which were not.” Price put on a new pair of gloves and picked up a bone to show Will. “The wire markings are easy enough to spot, and we collected powdery bone residue from the crime scene. Most likely holes were drilled at the crime scene. Lucky,” at this word, he gestured back towards his partner with an excited flourish, “lucky enough, your psycho was also psychotically OCD with his art supplies. Most of the remains are in good shape. It’s likely we can give you some pretty solid CODs for each victim.”

 

“Powder residue at the crime scene and…?” Will flipped to the back page of the report. He used two extended fingers to trace down the list of evidence gathered on site. Price shouldered into Will’s imagined sphere of personal space, and Will regarded the imposition with disbelief.

 

Price swatted Will’s hand away with a furrowed brow, “Silk is what you’re looking for. A few silk fibers caught on a prosthetic hip joint. Don’t think the doctor left it in there during the surgery.” Price raised his eyebrows and regarded Will with a sidelong look as he set his bone back down on its metal tray.

 

Zeller grabbed the report back from Will and Price’s hands and turned back to the page he had left off on, “You’d think that a bag of bones wrapped in silk might stand out in a place like Anacostia,” he paused in his typing and set his jaw askew while he thought. “Must be important to him.”

 

“It’s part of a ritual.” Will whisked out of the room and heard Price call out a friendly  _ see ya _ as Will left the medical examination labs. He quickly made his way through the FBI offices with the purpose of avoiding conversation rather than any real sense of rush. Once he made it back to his desk in an empty lecture hall, Will bridged his fingers over the keyboard of his laptop. The pictures on the screen were of Frederick Chilton and the Chesapeake Ripper murders – a lecture he had been avoiding presenting. He could avoid it a little longer.

 

Will closed the presentation and opened a new one as well as an older file. Pictures from his work on the Grafton totem were copied and pasted into the new file alongside pictures from the file Zeller had forwarded him from today’s crime scene. Even for Will, this seemed preemptive, but he knew many things about killers and psychopaths. It struck him, in the darkness of the room with only a single lamp and guiding lights on the tiered stairways, that this was unlikely to end as quickly as the Grafton case.

  
\---

It is night, and the water is rising. The moon is like a beacon on the oily black sea, swelling with the tide. 

 

Will is running.

 

Will is  _ trying  _ to run. 

 

But his feet can barely find purchase in the sand. The water is rising, and the water is swelling, and the sand is coming undone beneath him, swallowing him. 

 

Something terrible has dissolved in the water; that tower they found in Grafton, built larger, all its joints sewn and its parts alive. It has fallen, though, and the separated torsos and arms and necks writhe just under the surface; fingers emerge from the inky darkness to encircle Will’s ankles as he struggles toward the shore.

 

But the shore is lengthening, growing distant. 

 

His muscles strain and sweat is bleeding out of him; if he opens his mouth, he knows the air will swallow his screaming, soundless even to him. There’s a blackness to the water as it clings to his knees and thighs and, rising, his waist and belly; it’s too thick, he can feel the grit to it — black in the moonlight, quite black…

 

Blood.

 

And all the things underneath are swimming in it, a seething mesh of knitted parts pulling and stretching skin and tendons until they split apart, all the way to the bottom of the sea, and Will is slipping under.

 

_ Have you seen blood in the moonlight?  _

 

When he screams a pair of fingers worm inside of his mouth. 

 

_ It appears quite black.  _

 

\---

 

The feeling of Winston’s tongue on his wet palm woke him. Will jerked his hand away with a choked shout, then dissolved into miserable, labored panting. He didn’t feel gritty anymore, just chafed by the fabric of his soaked cotton shirt. He couldn’t find his glasses on the nightstand through the sting of sweat seeping through his eyelashes, but he could see from the blurry red shapes on the digital clock that it was after midnight.

 

Will collapsed onto his back again, pressing his fingertips to his forehead and resting the heels of his palms against the seam of his lips. He can smell Winston’s saliva and it was an awful smell, but real.

 

He could hear the antsy patter of paws circling his bed. He swallowed, throat dry and tight, raw as if he had been screaming. 

 

“I’m fine, guys,” he huffed, “I’m fine.” His shirt landed on the floor a couple of feet away with a dull, damp slap. 

 

_ I should call him.  _

 

The thought arose unbidden and startled him like an electric current traveling down his spine. Will shuddered involuntarily. He hadn’t spoken to Hannibal — not privately, not at length — since he had passively observed as the doctor successfully framed Chilton for the Chesapeake murders. It still wasn’t clear to him why the time had come for Chilton to take the fall, or if Hannibal could really stop in any event; probably, Will surmised grimly, he would just change up his pattern. 

 

Will’s stomach turned and made an unsettled sound. When Lass had shot Chilton it had put him in a coma; until he awoke, the trial wouldn’t be underway. But from what Will had heard at the office, the case was considered open and shut, and a plea of no contest was likely. Chilton, after all, could afford the kind of lawyer who could put the thing away quietly with time served alongside insider traders and crooked bank executives. 

 

What was it about Hannibal — it couldn’t really just be acumen, Will thought. There was something else, some awful purity, that bone-deep steadiness, the rhythmic calm of him….

 

_ He’s a killer.  _

 

It disgusted him that he had to remind himself. Sometimes he thought if he glimpsed Hannibal in the semi-darkness he would catch a ghostly, reflective glow at the back of his wide pupils, like a panther’s in the night. But that, too, was wrong, and he knew it. Hannibal lit those sublime emotions inside him that arose as twin fear and awe in the presence of predatory animals; they are destructive, yes, but full of majesty, full of glory. They don’t know shame. They can make you forget it, too. 

 

_ Hannibal is a man,  _ Will reminded himself.  _ He’s not an animal. He knows better. He just doesn’t care.  _

 

The bodies from Grafton had been returned to their graves – but he was digging them up again in his classroom. With his wits half-returned, it occurred to him again, more insistently now, that his psychiatrist might have something to say about this. Will pushed his body upright and looked to the quiet phone on his nightstand. He had no business bothering it this late in the middle of the night and, by extension, no business using it to connect him with the soothing voice he knew would answer on the other end of the line. Even in the dead of night, Will was sure Hannibal would answer his call.

The cellphone’s weight rested reassuringly in his palm. Will cradled it in his hand where its cold edges grew warm from his touch. His heart pulsed, and though he heard rhythmic beeps the phone in his hand didn’t throb. This realization startled him and he looked at the faintly glowing screen which displayed a ten-digit number. There was no name above the number, so he must have forgotten. He wondered if he ever knew the number by heart during his acquaintance with Hannibal. 

 

Will didn’t bother to scan his phone’s contacts to compare his mystery dial for closeness.

Instead, he put it aside without clearing the screen and eased back down into a lying position. He folded his hands at the center of his stomach, right below his ribcage and crossed his legs at his ankles while the dark ceiling above him began to take shape again.

He laid in bed this way until he shivered from the absence of his shirt; always on the brink of getting up to put his glasses on. When he finally got up, it was to go to his computer and mindlessly search the internet.

 

The last time Will had spoken with Hannibal was on the phone from his desk. 

 

_ “I’m afraid I’m going to have to cancel our dinner plans. I lost track of the day – not like that. Anyway, I’m teaching tomorrow and I need to prepare a lecture.” _

 

_ “The duties of an instructor. I understand,” his voice did not betray any falsehood. “I’ve taken on a course myself this semester. The psychology of desire at Johns Hopkins University. Next time, Will.” _

 

Perhaps he had distanced himself. Will closed the virtual copy of Hannibal’s CV on his internet browser. It hadn’t been recently updated and did not include information about his current post at Johns Hopkins. Tomorrow, he would inquire at the university.

 

Now, he could return to sleep.

 

Or try.


	2. ni

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will goes to Johns Hopkins to reunite with Hannibal. He's becoming increasingly troubled by his current case and the lack of professionalism among the local authorities. Team Sassy Science gets work done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still at the slow part of the slow burn. Everybody likes a good slow burn, right?
> 
> As pointed out by one reader, this is a multi-chapter fic, so expect more. This should fix the formatting and stop readers from scratching their heads at a single-chapter "slow burn" fic...haha.

Of course the lecture hall would be at the very rear of the frozen quad green, its white columns lit by floodlights, doors papered over with a patchwork of bulletins and flyers. In the foyer where he loosened his coat, Will passed by a fishbowl of condoms marked with a ‘take one’ sign. He did not. 

 

_ Room C3B. The psychology of desire.  _

 

Will lingered outside the double doors, fingers tracing over the push bar door handle, where a pale blue enamel had been chipped and worn over the years, revealing dull nickel. He could hear that voice, low and melodic, its inflection lyrical. 

 

_ Must be enjoying himself.  _

 

It was dark when he slipped inside, lit by a projection on two broad screens at the back of the lecture hall and the cool blue glow of scattered laptop screens. 

 

Hannibal was in the middle of a sentence, following notes on the podium with an occasional downward glance. Will slid into an empty seat as quietly as possible, unthreading his scarf from his neck. 

 

“Fromm’s proposal is that psychoanalysis works, or I should say, is  _ insightful _ beyond the individual level. It is a useful interpretive framework not only for single lives, but for relationships, for society. And so there is self-actualization, self-knowledge, yes, understanding oneself, and then there is a process of societal actualization, of actualization in relationships.” 

 

A different slide appeared upon the screens behind him. Hannibal read it aloud. 

 

“Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of the beloved person, love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness. Respect is not fear and awe; it denotes, in accordance with the root of the word,” here Hannibal paused and explained that the Latin  _ respicio  _ meant ‘to look at,’ and then went on: “the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his individuality and uniqueness. To respect a person is not possible without knowing him; care and responsibility would be blind if they were not guided by the knowledge of the person's individuality.” 

 

He gave his students a few moments to copy down notes and ask questions; no hands arose, which amused Will. 

 

“Now then,” Hannibal said, and there was a split-second of pitch darkness between the projector switching off and the lecture hall lights flickering on, “onto business, or rather, pleasure,” a flutter of laughter rose up at the joke, “your exams will be given in this room the Friday after next during our usual hour, so please plan appropriately. Thank you, good evening.” 

 

Conversation hummed to life. Students packed their things and climbed up the lecture hall aisle in pairs and threes, zipping on coats and tugging down hats. 

 

Will advanced opposite them, descending the steps to the podium as coeds brushed by with book bags slung over their shoulders. Hannibal looked up from his notes then, seemingly in reverie, and as Will drew nearer and recognition dawned, a cryptic smile spread over his lips and his eyes sharpened to focus.

 

“Will,” he greeted, “I had wondered if it was just my imagination.” 

 

“Thought you saw me in the crowd?” Will returned a radiant grin, somewhat to his surprise.

 

“Or rather, smelled you.” 

 

“That stuff with the ship on the bottle.” 

 

“I could recommend alternatives if you like.” 

 

“In my price range?” 

 

Hannibal laughed, stacking his notes and folding them into a handsome leather portfolio. “Good things are worth the cost, Will.” 

 

“Yeah? How much debt are these kids going into to hear your thoughts on the psychology of desire?” Will teased.

 

“That, I don’t know. A shameful amount I suppose. What did _ you _ make of the lecture?” 

 

“Wish I’d heard more of it. You always block quote like that?” he gestured to the projector screens, now blank, where the text had been. 

 

“Not always, but often. Do you have a theory of block quoting, Will? One instructor to another.” 

 

“I do, actually.” 

 

“I’m not surprised.” 

 

It was Will’s turn to laugh. “Done for the day? It’s just about five-thirty.” 

 

\---

 

Hannibal had the uncanny ability to appear almost anywhere, but Will still had a hard time finding him at home in the Five and Dime pub just off campus. But to the untrained eye, he thought, Hannibal likely blended in, another well-respected professor aging gracefully into distinction, with a double-breasted wool coat and pewter-colored tie. 

 

For his part, Hannibal didn’t want to ask to what he owed the pleasure of Will’s company, lest he force a conclusion to it. So he refrained, following their wandering conversation as both of them hovered over nearly untouched drinks. 

 

“I would’ve thought you’d be against notes,” Will said. “I mean, like — like Socrates. Words are to knowlege like...pictures are to the real thing.” 

 

“Not at all,” Hannibal retorted with a vague shake of his head, “not at all. Words are imperfect representations of absolute ideas, but copying down notes does reinforce basic concepts to build upon.” 

 

“Yeah, but — I mean, you’re not just trying to teach them basic concepts.” 

 

“We have to save something for the graduate seminars, Will.” 

 

They shared a private laugh, and Will watched Hannibal nuzzle into the rim of his glass, inhaling deeply before drinking. A spangling of Christmas lights lined the bar and sparkled in the mirror; Will saw the strange, garish colors transform the grey of Hannibal’s eyes into a rich, reflective black. In moments like these he could almost forget the history of those practiced hands, and the nature of their business together. He swallowed thickly. 

 

Forgetting wouldn’t be wise.

 

“Have you been working much, lately?” Hannibal felt himself reluctantly straying toward the reason Will had come to see him. His curiosity couldn’t countenance the mystery for long. 

 

“I...have, yes,” Will returned, drumming his fingers on the edge of his glass. His tone lightened; a note of apology. “Not as much time for teaching.”

 

“Something I could help with, I suppose.” 

 

Will winced. 

 

“We don’t have to talk about, uh...business.” 

 

“No?” 

 

“No.” 

 

“What else then, if not business?” 

 

“Well, pleasure,” Will blurted, having decided in a split-second that a reference to Hannibal’s closing lecture remarks would land as a fond joke instead of a rather forward suggestion. 

 

Hannibal’s brows lifted and he took another sip of his drink. Will wasn’t ever sure he had seen him stall before, and it charmed him despite himself. 

 

“I’m attending an event next weekend at the Museum of Art, if you would like to come along. We could continue our conversation there.”

 

“Our conversation about —”

 

“About whatever it is you won’t say,” Hannibal supplied evenly. 

 

“Right. Well — sure.” 

 

It was an impulse. Even Hannibal seemed vaguely taken aback, and then, in a blink, warm and fond. He couldn’t predict Will, even now. 

 

“Excellent. Let’s plan to meet at the museum, Saturday evening at eight.” 

 

With that Hannibal stood and began to fasten the buttons of his coat. Will straightened in his seat, feeling a sudden urgency. 

 

“It’s this — case,” he managed, half-turning to face him. Hannibal laid a hand on his shoulder, and Will heard the distinguished creak of his leather driving gloves. 

 

“Will,” he said, leaning in close enough for his breath to stir the curls at his temple, “next time, yes? You never know who is listening in a place like this.” 

 

Will wondered if a gallery opening, or whatever the hell it was, would be any more discreet. But he nodded dumbly and didn’t protest, turning back to his drink once they had said their goodbyes. 

 

\---

 

It was only when he arrived back at home that he began to feel dizzy, and not because of the alcohol. 

 

_ What the hell was I thinking?  _

 

He threw his coat over the back of the couch and greeted his dogs as they crowded around him, eager to see him. They trailed him as he made his way to the bathroom, shedding clothes in an unceremonious pile before switching on the shower, and waiting at the tub’s ledge for steam to rise. 

 

It wasn’t a good idea to see Hannibal again, not when things had just begun to settle, to feel solid and real again. Will knew that even as his insides fluttered at the memory of the hand on his shoulder.

 

He stepped into the spray. 

 

“Fuck,” he sighed below his breath. The water enveloped him and the sound drowned out any other noise, leaving him alone with his thoughts.

 

Even with Chilton awaiting trial for the Chesapeake murders, he knew what Hannibal was, and Hannibal knew he knew. No admission had ever passed between them, but then again, none needed to. For a time, Will had almost thought the thread that connected them was severed. Now he felt it again, humming with life and possibility, stirring him inside. Echoes rose up from the past, and every word they had ever shared seemed to vibrate at a low hum beneath his conscious thoughts. 

 

_ If you play... _

 

A palm steadied him against the shower wall. He felt vaguely seasick, and reminded of a terrible, lonesome ache in the core of him. 

 

\---

 

“Officer Martin and Officer Blakely, two of the District’s finest.” 

 

Will squinted in the frigid morning air as pale sunlight flooded up from the asphalt. The two detectives Crawford introduced him to were sharing a cigarette. One jabbed a hand out to shake and retracted it with a dull scowl when Will showed no sign of removing either of his hands from his pockets.

 

“Special agent Will Graham,” he introduced himself, “I’m --”

 

“Yeah, yeah. The profiler. We got a new one out of the river this morning.” 

 

They led him over the taped off barrier while Jack hung back deep in conversation with the man assumed to be the police commissioner he owed some sort of favor. By now there were onlookers, morning commuters lingering with necks outstretched, and a smattering of indefatigable college art students.

 

“We should try to, ah,” Will muttered, “disperse the crowd.” His eyes scanned relentlessly for spirals of auburn hair. 

 

“They’ll get over it,” Blakely volunteered, blithely.

 

“Should try to at least maintain some perimeter,” Will argued.

 

“There ain’t much to see,” Martin replied. 

 

They had laid the body on a blue plastic tarp on a concrete platform near the water. There was a cranium but no jaw; the water and its creatures had chewed away the soft flesh of the tongue, leaving just a ragged stump. The hands, too, had been taken; and everything below the ribs, save for the spinal column, which jutted down out of the empty rib cage like a serpent’s tail, with tattered ligaments still clinging on. The pelvis and legs were missing.

 

“Do you have an ID?” he asked, clenching his jaw against the stench. 

 

“Nah, I wouldn’t count on it, either,” Blakely answered. He had pulled his scarf up over his nose and mouth, wheezing through it. “Most of these people aren’t even from around here, just passing through. There’s a big Amtrak station uptown, they come in there, trickle down here.”

 

“All the meth is down here,” Martin added with a breath of smoke. “Uptown, it’s all coke.” 

 

“This is a  _ crime scene, _ ” Will snapped, “put that out. Are you a real cop?” 

 

“Hey, relax, buddy —” 

 

“Pete, take it easy, Jack said he’s —”

 

“ — I know what he said —” 

 

Will stalked back toward the perimeter and searched the inside of his coat for his badge, which he flashed at the crowd with commanding authority that surprised even him. 

 

“Hey, FBI! This is a crime scene, move on, come on! Move!” 

 

Jack rushed over from his conversation as the crowd began to filter away. 

 

“Will, Will. Everything okay?” 

 

Will huffed a breath of steam. “These cops don’t give a shit, Jack, what the hell is going on? Is this some kind of joke?” 

 

“Will, I’m gonna need you to calm down. Listen —” 

 

“No,  _ you  _ listen, Jack, they’re over there screwing around, I can’t even be sure the scene’s been secure this whole time, I don’t —”

 

“Graham, stand down,” Jack interjected, “You need to get in there and play nice, or I’m benching you.”

 

He swallowed, fury manifesting as a blotchy pinkness in his cheeks, but he bit his tongue. If he didn’t investigate this, apparently no one intended to. 

 

“Fine,” he hissed, steam curling from his teeth. It didn’t feel like the last word.

 

 

Price and Zeller had little luck with the latest body, though they had more information about the Specter.

 

“Looks like this guy’s been working on this thing for years,” Price observed, peering into some slide. “Maybe decades. This can’t be the only one he’s planning on making.”

 

“Of course not,” Will replied, “The last body was an advertisement. He’s about halfway done.”

 

“Jack’s got extra surveillance in the area you designated yourself,” Zeller stated smugly, “Don’t think it’ll be easy to assemble a giant bone monster under those circumstances.”

 

“No, but that’s the thrill of it, isn’t it?” Will commented in a cryptic tone.

 

They had compiled a thick case file for Will’s perusal over the last couple of days, and he now felt compelled to sort through it, stationing himself in an empty plastic chair in a little-traveled corridor on a floor reserved mostly for clerical work. 

 

There were headshots of the victims where recently applicable. In some cases, none had been photographed for years. The thought stung Will: In this day and age, where every phone was a camera, how could someone go without appearing in a single picture for years, unless they knew next to no one? 

 

_ Or next to no one with a phone.  _

 

They had one another. Most of the interviews were with fellow homeless people who described the deceased as family, though they weren’t. 

 

_ Technically,  _ Will noted. 

 

The crime scene photographs were more of the same, enigmatic, withholding. He could see there was artistry, careful workmanship — and something else, something he couldn’t extract, though he could just sense it.

 

He studied the photographs for hours, as office workers went to lunch and returned, tapped on keyboards, answered phones, tucked themselves into coats and nodded courteously to him on their way out. By the end of the night he held his glasses in one hand and his forehead in the other, sliding his fingers down to pinch the bridge of his nose. 

 

“I can’t…” he murmured to himself. The florescent lights had begun to shut off in an alternating pattern. 

 

There was  _ something.  _ He knew it. 

 

He lifted his phone from his pocket on impulse.

 

“Good evening, Will.” 

 

Will swallowed thickly and let his eyes drift shut. 

 

_ What am I doing?  _

 

“Doctor Lecter, I...wondered if you might be free for dinner, uh,” Will felt the stack of files threaten to slide from his lap as he lifted his hand to look at his watch. He grabbed at them desperately. “...uh, in a couple hours?”

 

“...I suppose I could be, Will. Where shall we meet?” Hannibal paused. “I hope this doesn’t negate our plans for Saturday.”

 

The bastard sounded amused.

 

“No, no — nope, still on. Uh, as for a place, I’ll — I’ll let you know, I just uh — just, let’s call it eight-thirty, I’ll — I’ll text you.” 

 

“Of course.” 

 

Will hung up without saying goodbye, without catching his breath, without feeling his heart rate slow one beat. 


	3. san

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dinner between old friends.

Evening fell early and came with snow. Hannibal avoided the worst of it by arriving on time.

 

Will, of course, was late.

 

Hannibal was particular about his choice of restaurant; he needed to respect some element of artistry to submit to cooking other than his own. This was an exception: Will had asked him to meet here for dinner, which had made him curious enough to agree without proper investigation into the establishment.

 

Nonetheless it was comfortable enough, at least for a snowy night. Will had either requested a table in a secluded spot or had, for once, happened upon a bit of luck. Hannibal watched the street through the leaded glass windows near their table as he awaited his guest, and wondered what sort of case must have Will in such a state.

 

He took the liberty of ordering wine, and waited with glass in hand, his coat checked, leather driving gloves tucked inside the breast pocket. The candle burning warmly in a red glass box at the center of the table lit a soft sheen on his suit jacket and tie, and cast the angles of his face in heavy shadow. 

 

Twenty minutes later, Will arrived at the table having neglected to check his own effects at the front of the restaurant which was decorated much like Hannibal’s own dining room with black accents, stone fixtures, and green plants lit up by hidden sconces. Will noted this all with a touch of amusement, wondering whether Hannibal would appreciate the similarities or if he’d be offended by the artifice. He had scheduled a reservation here on Alana’s recommendation. Will went to restaurants as rarely as Hannibal, if not for completely different reasons.

 

The restaurant was clearly a place a woman might pick – the pristine bar stood in the middle of the dining area as a centerpiece. Each table was spaced out generously from the next for some measure of privacy, and the portions he could see were small to moderately sized. Perhaps he should have told her that he was planning on meeting with Hannibal instead of a woman, but some part of him guarded the fact as if it were a secret less because he was embarrassed and more because he didn’t want her specifically to know.

 

Will had refused the hostess’s offer to show him to his table and found his own way towards a back window where he spotted Hannibal’s distinct silhouette against a snowy backdrop.

 

It didn’t take long for Hannibal to notice him, and he tipped his head up in casual greeting before he shook out his jacket and draped it over the back of his seat. His briefcase, with its hefty case file, was placed on the windowsill, and leaned against the cold glass.

 

“Sorry I’m late. There were more files to pull than I had anticipated. Have you looked at the menu?” Will made no move to look at it himself, figuring that Hannibal would have a better idea of what to order than he would even if he had been here thirty minutes before Hannibal instead of twenty minutes after.

 

If his lateness bothered Hannibal, the doctor never let it show. In fact he presented only one small indication of displeasure; when he rose to greet Will, his eye caught on a glimmer of light reflecting off a chrome-colored button, and he realized Will was wearing, of all things, blue jeans. He pursed his lips, but said nothing. 

 

“I’ve ordered wine,” he said, waving off Will’s apology with a genial nod. “I hope you don’t mind. As for the menu…” he trailed off, and then, clearing his throat: “There is veal.” 

 

He could have been a little more generous, he supposed, but Will’s mention of files at once had him curious. 

 

“Shall we discuss murder over dinner, then?” he asked, glancing toward Will’s heavy bag resting against the frosted glass. “This must be an interesting case. I haven’t heard a thing about it on the news. Even our reliable Ms. Lounds has been scant with details.” 

 

He watched Will’s eyes as he leaned into his wine glass. “I feel privy to an intimate secret, Will.” 

 

“Maybe murder before dinner rather than over it,” Will suggested. He followed Hannibal’s eyes to his work bag, and despite having just set it down to rest, opened its clasp and flipped the flap over its back before withdrawing the dark brown accordion file from inside.

 

He spoke as he untwisted the string from its closure. “I’m surprised you haven’t heard about it,” Will pulled a slim file – the only one he intended to show Hannibal unless more were requested – from the bunch and slid it across the table so that Hannibal could peruse it at his own leisure.

 

With the accordion file replaced in the largest section of his bag, Will crossed his arms across his chest and continued to debrief Hannibal on his latest case and the primary reason for this dinner. “I suppose you’ll hear about something more sensational Ms. Lounds is working on now instead of this case if you go to Tattlecrime, but this should have at least made local news unless Jack has some reason for hiding it from the press that he hasn’t shared with me yet. When I got to the crime scene, there were three news vans from major stations parked along the street. By the time I left, I’m sure all of them were there. Somewhat of a feeding frenzy, if you will.”

 

Will uncrossed his arms and reached for his wine glass, which Hannibal had filled while Will was talking. The label on the bottle was ripped a quarter of the way down in the corner. No doubt, it was a vintage rarely requested for its obscurity and likely exorbitant price tag.

 

“In any case, the secret you’re privy to is this: twenty-five mostly complete skeletons were used to make this thing – they call it the Specter of Anacostia. Due to the location and the nine victims we’ve identified thus far, it’s likely that all the victims are homeless abductees from the surrounding area. It’s kind of appalling, I mean Price and Zeller have concluded that these bodies date back to various times spanning over a decade of time. Nobody cares at the local precincts. They’re downright thankful. Maybe that’s why you didn’t hear it on the news. Probably wasn’t worth a follow-up for the networks.”

 

Will pursed his lips and took a drink of wine to clear the phantom sour taste in his mouth.

 

Meanwhile Hannibal carefully slid the photographs out of the folder Will had produced, handling them delicately, like artifacts. With the stack extracted he rotated it, and began to slowly shuffle through the pictures, studying each angle intently. 

 

“Homeless…” he murmured, and his brows drew together in a slight furrow. He traced the shape of the sculpture with a tentative fingertip, seemingly counting the bones in the oversized femur. 

 

A waitress arrived bearing news of various specials, none of which seemed to interest Hannibal. He placed the photographs face-down on the tabletop to order an entree, not having enough confidence in the chef to apply himself to courses. When she had gone, he turned the full, searing focus of his attention back to Will. 

 

“In traditional Japanese lore, the  _ gashadokuro  _ is a spirit composed of the bones of those who died of famine or starvation in the wilderness. Untended by proper burial rites, rage builds up in the decaying bodies, and the bones become enchanted with a grudge against the living. They coalesce and form a gigantic skeleton, some ten or fifteen times the size of an ordinary human, and stalk the countryside at night, killing until their anger burns out.” 

 

He offered the photographs back to Will, though the impulse struck him to ask if he could keep one. 

 

He resisted it.

 

“Your monster has a grudge. His anger is transforming them; it will keep transforming them until it burns out. I expect he’s been killing steadily for decades with no intention of stopping anytime soon.” 

 

As usual, Will was displeased to hear his own dark suspicions confirmed. Will doubted this would be the last specter they would find down the ghastly streets of Anacostia — a neighborhood with no shortage of starving bodies.

 

“That raises a good question,” Will countered. “Were our victims alive when they ran into our monster, or were they already dead? He’s been collecting, so it’s something to look into.”

 

Surely the forensics would help clarify this matter, but Will wouldn’t know for sure until he either looked at each skeleton himself or waited on the report from the lab. With so many bodies to consider, he was fairly confident that it didn’t need his personal attention quite yet. Price had already noted the similarities between this case and case with the totem pole in Grafton, West Virginia. What was striking were the differences. 

 

“In Grafton, the victims had nothing in common, with the exception of Joel Summers and Fletcher Marshall. These victims – in theory – all have a common profile. They’re homeless. As for the motive, Grafton mostly consisted of crimes of convenience. I can’t say anything for Anacostia yet. If you had to guess?” Will led.

 

“I would imagine this person became used to the act of killing a long time ago,” Hannibal supplied readily, “and is now in repose.” 

 

The whole enterprise would take time and a sure hand. It wasn’t the work of someone who still led an otherwise busy life. Hannibal knew from experience that the existence of an aristocrat — unquestionably funded, leisurely, with hours and hours of empty time — gave itself best to killing with an eye to art. 

 

“There isn’t anything especially inventive about it; it’s folk art, craftwork...” he added, running his fingertips along the stem of his wine glass and imagining the smooth length of a femur. 

 

_ Femur _ : simply ‘thigh,’ in Latin. In Roman writing the word was often used to indicate fertility in general, a kind of proximate euphemism for genitalia. But it left, in Hannibal’s mind, a decidedly feminine impression — no surprise, the doctor contemplated; the plural of  _ femur  _ was, in some cases,  _ femina _ , woman. His mind drifted down beneath the table, where Will, by no measure feminine, had clad his thighs in denim. 

 

_ What a dreadful waste,  _ Hannibal mused. 

 

Their waitress shortly produced two plates of veal situated over a mushroom-speckled polenta, in which Hannibal could taste the not entirely unpleasant nuttiness of parmesan rind. 

 

“Not in repose,” Will corrected, punctuating with wags of his fork. “The most recent body was the easiest to identify, so they started from there. Only been dead for about a week – two weeks, tops.”

 

Since the food wasn’t prepared by Hannibal, Will felt no shame in eating it rather quickly. He didn’t take care to taste everything separately before assembling it all onto one forkful to taste the difference in the whole. Instead, he pushed the veal around the plate to smear it indelicately in sauce before eating it all in a few bites and moving on to what remained of the polenta underneath.

 

Will looked at Hannibal in expectation of the other man’s response, but his gaze lingered instead on the neatly cut square of meat Hannibal brought up to his mouth. His heart launched itself up into the back of his throat so that Will found it difficult to swallow. He attempted to remedy this with another mouthful of wine.

 

“In any case,” Will recovered, “I wonder if the artistic aspect — the craftsmanship — is significant to him. The totem was a memorial – an attempt at reclaiming a legacy. This…”

 

“This,” Hannibal continued, “is like whittling. Folk art, to pass the time. Whatever he did before, he isn’t doing it anymore.” 

 

Will must have been starving, he surmised. It certainly wasn’t the quality of the food. 

 

Perhaps thanks to his ravenous pace, their waitress returned sooner rather than later to clear away plates, and Hannibal gladly surrendered his half-finished, glad to have a moment with Will’s undivided attention. 

 

Which didn’t last long. 

 

There was a brief look of stunned epiphany on Will’s face across the table from Hannibal. His eyes stared through Hannibal and one hand scratched the back of the other at the edge of his sleeve.

 

He remembered the day they found the Specter — remembered scanning the crowds full of young college-aged faces. At the time, it was easier to see the few homeless people who mixed in with the crowd. He remembered an older gentleman with a fraying Nationals cap and a down coat that seemed to have lost all its down. But most notably, he remembered, were the fading pink and white blossoms on the backs of his hands. He hadn’t noticed it at the time, but as he saw the man turn away in his memory, his expression turned from somber to lighthearted. Recognition. Will felt the contentment as if it were his own.

 

“I’ve gotta go.” Will wrestled with his bag for a moment, shoving the folder of pictures inside without returning them to the accordion file it had come in. He pushed his chair in with a loud screech and didn’t bother to acknowledge Hannibal or the check.

 

He was gone out into the snow just as hastily as he had arrived.


	4. shi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will pulls off some not-so-fancy investigation at work and gets called out by Jack. When he gets home, there's a surprise waiting for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the (basically nonexistent) hiatus! Hope you enjoyed Nocturne. It was a lot of fun to write, and we figured you all deserved some smut since we're keeping you waiting so long in this fic.
> 
> Spoiler alert: nothing explicit in this chapter either, but I promise it's a good story. Plus Jack and Will get in an fight and sassy!Will is always great.
> 
> The consolation is that even though there's nothing explicit, Will is definitely building up his inner horndog.
> 
> Enjoy!

Will had used his scarf, folded several times, as a pillow, and his coat had sufficed for a blanket. Had it been anyone else asleep on a row of chairs in the corridor outside the lab, Price would’ve been reasonably surprised. As it was Will, he wasn’t.

 

“Morning, sunshine,” Price yawned, nudging Will’s shoulder. Will stirred with a groan.

 

“Morning.”

 

“Late night?”

 

“You ever get a COD on the body they pulled out of the river?”

 

“Just what I like to hear at seven in the morning. Here, hold this.”

 

Will sat up unsteadily, glasses crooked over his bleary eyes, and accepted Price’s paper coffee cup as Price fished out his badge and scanned them into the lab.

 

Fluorescent fixtures flickered to life as they entered, bathing them in sterile white light. Will’s head throbbed.

 

“Thanks.” Price took back his coffee and strolled to his computer station, pulling up a series of documents. “So, COD. It’s a little up in the air. The guy was severely malnourished and had been living on pretty poor nutrition for a while. Teeth are a mess. There were ligatures....the guy was practically cocooned. Not sure COD was strangulation, though.”

 

Price glanced up as if to make sure Will was still listening. “You’re gonna love this, though,” he said, “COD kinda takes a back seat when you consider the rest of the autopsy. We found schist and saprolite in the stomach and throat.” He paused for emphasis. Will’s mind took a moment to catch up.

 

“Sch — schist?”

 

“And saprolite. We didn’t get it from the others since they were no skin and all bones.”

 

“That’s — those are...types of dirt?”

 

“Bingo. One-hundred percent DC ground soil. Saprolite is most common in the lower levels of soil, so —”

 

“So he’s keeping them underground.”

 

**“** Mm-hm. And they’re ingesting the dirt.”

 

Will was silent for a moment.

 

“Did he _starve_ them to death?”

 

“I can’t rule it out,” Price allowed, “it’s possible.”

 

“Gashadokuro…” Will murmured, pensive.

 

“Come again?”

 

But he was gone.

 

**\---**

 

“I’m uh,” Will fumbled with his badge, then managed to flash it to the crowd of photography students while their instructor stood by, arms crossed. The art school crowd wasn’t a big fan of cops, he figured. “I’m with the FBI. Special — Special agent Will Graham, with the FBI. I’m looking for any pictures any of you may have taken of the Specter. Anything you can develop, your teacher has been kind enough to lend me some class time to do. If you have digital pictures, I’d appreciate you sending them to me by email,” Will copied his email address to the whiteboard as neatly as he could. “You can submit them anonymously, I won’t record your names, but it’s important for the investigation.”

 

It wasn’t the most stirring endorsement of his work, he knew, but on five hours of sleep in a row of plastic chairs, it was the best he could do. He pressed his lips together and clasped his hands in front of himself, awaiting volunteers.

 

“I think I got a couple,” a girl with greenish hair shaved at the sides mumbled, “I didn’t think it was _real.”_

 

“Nobody did,” Will assured her, “that’s — that’s great, thanks. Thanks.”

 

The student shuffled down the aisle of seats and headed to the dark room. A few others shortly followed her, regarding Will with palpable suspicion.

 

Will was impressed by the number of pictures he was able to collect in just one ten minute period before the instructor began lecturing. For his part, the man seemed excited for the opportunity to explain the real-world applications of photography to his students and asked Will, who was stationed in the back row of the classroom, if he had anything to say to aspiring forensic photographers.

 

Without lifting his gaze from his stack of photos, Will answered, “Have a strong stomach, and the next time someone tells you that fact is stranger than fiction…” There was an awkward pause as Will shined the light from the screen of his phone on a promising picture, but realized quickly that he was looking at a woman instead of a man. He placed it to the side just in case.

 

“Fact and fiction, Agent Graham?” The instructor adjusted his glasses and proved himself a remarkably tolerant man with an even, if not pleasant, tone.

 

“The most creative minds are often damaged.” The students either chuckled or booed at Will’s judgment.

 

“No, no, it’s an interesting debate, isn’t it? Source and inspiration.” While the instructor led the class in a discussion that Will had started, but had no interest in following, Will turned back to his pictures, finished with the first class’s portfolio, and headed back out into the cold.

 

It was an appalling reminder of the lack of concern the first police on the scene had for preserving the integrity of the evidence. Will saw way too many of what he’d call “upskirt” views of the Specter from below and felt obligated to tell the students that just because they owned a wide-angle lens did not mean that they had to use it. Distortions and blurs had been applied and he was almost annoyed that some of the students seemed like they were more interested in showing him personal style than providing him with usable evidence. For these reasons, as forensic photos, almost ninety-five percent of them were useless. As works of art, he guessed that more than ninety-nine percent were laughable.

 

In the back of his mind, he wondered if Hannibal had a taste for photography. Everything he knew of the man’s artistic tastes tended to lean towards the whimsical. Even the Boucher visitation of _Leda and the Swan_ above his mantle was equal parts unsettling and fanciful.

 

And erotic.

 

Will pressed his hands into his eyes as he sat slumped over his steering wheel.

 

Of course he was thinking of Hannibal; he had thought of nothing _but_ Hannibal and this case since the latter prompted him to reach out to the former. Maybe it had always been a matter of time, he thought. It made him grimace.

 

\---

 

At headquarters, Will turned his collection of pictures over to imaging and had them produce a panorama of the available angles, layering translucent copies over one another until a version of the scene emerged providing an view near 360 degrees.

 

He shut himself in an empty office and began affixing the printed version to the walls, piece by piece, with scotch tape. When the scene had assembled around him he stood in the center of it, closed his eyes, and placed himself there.

 

Grey-black salt-and-pepper hair underneath a Nationals cap and a flattened down coat with a broken zipper — not homeless, but not well off — near the cement stairs that led down to the water’s edge. Just over his shoulder an orange caution sign; there was road work that day, and Will had followed the line of color down to the hands at his sides, dirty fingernails and fading tattoos of pinkish flowers.

 

Road work, so no cars nearby. But he had been there among the first of the crowd.

 

He had a sheen of sweat to him, even on such a cold morning.

 

_A bicycle._

 

Will remembered a rack nearby on the street with the _Capital Bikeshare_ logo mounted atop it; he figured the kind of guy who couldn’t replace a worn-out coat in midwinter was likely the kind of person who would use cheaply rented city bikes with no maintenance costs.

 

He groped for the desk phone and cursed when he found it without a dial tone.

 

“Fuck,” he seethed, bursting into the hall, where he collided with someone he guessed would take an order from a special agent.

 

“Hey, I need you to pull IDs for all men of Japanese ancestry middle-aged and older on the Capital Bikeshare registry.”

 

“Wh--who are you?”

 

“It’s for Jack Crawford, he’ll authorize it. I just -- we need to rush this.”

 

\---

 

Will ended up supplying what was, in his opinion, a white lie to obtain the warrant; when served, the Capital Bikeshare employee he had initially contacted grudgingly produced a registry of names.

 

He had already been sifting through them for hours when his cell rang in the darkness of the empty office.

 

“Hello, Jack.” Will held the cellphone to his face as he continued to flip through the list Capital Bikeshare had provided – determined to find something before Jack pulled the plug. “You can only be calling me because you’re either too enraged to speak with me face to face, or you’re away from the office. If it’s the latter, I apologize.”

 

“You’re damn right, I’m enraged, and for your information, I’m away from the office too. You want to tell me why I get a call from Brian Zeller at lunchtime telling me that you’ve been harassing half of the bureau for the better part of an hour for some trumped up warrant under my supposed auspices?” Jack’s anger lost some of its bite to Will because he had become accustomed to the style of yelling Crawford always employed. He had no sense of what actually bothered Jack.

 

“It’s not trumped up, Jack. I got pictures from the art school nearest to our crime scene. We always say that killers often return to the scene of the crime. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t consider the possibility.” Will regretted the last bit of what he said as soon as the line went silent on the other end.

 

“Graham! My office, now! I don’t care if you have something else to do. You and that list better be in my office when I get there, and maybe I’ll be in a better mood to discuss things with you by that time. I am doing my job...the right way...despite what your tone suggests you think,” Jack’s sign off was the click of a dropped call. He clearly had no interest in hearing whatever Will had to say in reply to his tirade, but he also seemed unlikely to abide by Will’s disobedience in the matter. Will figured he owed his compliance to Jack for sidestepping his authority, and gathered his list and coat to go wait in Jack’s office.

 

When Jack arrived, he silently motioned for Will to sit in the chair directly opposite him instead of the one Will had been stationed in by the door.

 

“Jack, before you --”

 

“I don’t want to hear it, Will. How long have you been waiting here?”

 

“Three and a half hours,” Will held Jack’s gaze indignantly and failed to hide his annoyance about being kept waiting as some kind of punishment.

 

“Three and a half hours...that’s a long time Will,” Jack nodded slowly and bridged his fingers, tapping the tips together as he paused for effect. He sighed deeply into his hands and shook his head. “It takes an average of about fifteen minutes for me to get a search warrant on that kind of thing.”

 

“Takes about the same amount of time to save on my car insurance.”

 

“Shut it, Graham. You wanna know what takes three and a half hours?”

 

“Probably whatever it is you just did.”

 

“Exactly. It takes three and a half hours for me to straighten out your mess — convince someone I didn’t know about your actions even though you said I did, then convince them I hadn’t discussed your findings with you before requesting and convincing them to reissue another warrant,” Jack pulled a thicker envelope of papers out of his briefcase. “This is your new list. It has the names of all the currently registered members of Capital Bikeshare. Now, you are going to look through this list as my specially assigned profiling consultant, and you are going to highlight a number of possible suspects with no regard to racial background. Your suspects should all be viable candidates for the crime. You are working backwards.”

 

Jack took Will’s thinner list in one hand and grabbed a paper clip with the other. “This,” he shook both, “is your needle.” Next he lifted his larger pile of papers and dropped the paper clip in a dish of a hundred or more identical paper clips, “I’m gonna need you to bury it in this haystack.”

 

Will clenched his jaw.

 

“Besides, Will, what makes you so certain he’s some bike-riding old Japanese guy anyway?”

 

“Hannibal said --”

 

Jack held up a hand, “I’m going to have to ask you to consider the words that are about to come out of your mouth.”

 

“Doctor Lecter said,” Will reiterated, “that in Japanese myth, there are stories of a gigantic skeleton made from the spirits and remains of poor people who had died of starvation. They called it the _gashadokuro_. What do we have? We have starved victims and a gigantic skeleton. What more could you possibly want?”

 

Jack rolled his eyes and looked up to the ceiling. “Could have saved yourself a lot of trouble if you had just told me all of this before going all rebel cop on me. As it stands, you’ll have my haystack for me on this desk by tomorrow morning.”

 

\---

_Goemon Sawada._ 52\. Immigrated from Japan in 1987. Naturalized in 1989.

 

Minor criminal record. Nonviolent drug offenses, a few fights during a four-year stint in prison.

 

And then nothing.

 

Will figured he was already in deep enough for a minor infraction not to matter so much. He shouldered into one of the offices on the lab floor (had he known where Zeller’s was, he would’ve used it) and picked up the desk phone. This time there _was_ a dial tone, and a nicely intimidating FBI caller ID to boot.

 

When the warden at the New York prison Sawada did time at answered, Will found himself lunging forward in the stranger’s desk chair to read their name off a piece of mail.

 

“This is — agent Cliff Hitchner,” he was lucky it was not a woman’s desk, “I’m calling to ask about uh...an inmate, who — who was in the pen in ‘92. Any idea who was working the floor back then?”

 

They put him on hold and shuffled him from line to line for about forty-five minutes while he perpetually checked over his shoulder to make sure no night owls would walk in on him commandeering agent Hitchner’s phone.

 

Will ended up talking with a guard named Hicks who had worked Sawada’s block in 1992. He was an old guy, hardened by years on guard duty, but he remembered this peculiar prisoner well enough. A quiet fellow, he said, who fought over drugs in the mess hall; he didn’t seem all together there, not right. He confirmed the pink flower tattoos and said they ran all the way up his arms to his shoulders, but his back was consumed in shiny gnarls of scar tissue, with no visible ink.

 

“They used to say he was Yakuza,” Hicks said. “You know, the Japan mafia.”

 

\---

 

Will pulled into his driveway at a quarter past two in the morning. There were no crickets, no wind; the countryside was silent in the winter, with snow on the ground still from the other night’s storm. His dogs began to bark as soon as they caught sight of his headlights, and he would’ve bounded up the porch steps to them if he hadn’t been stopped by the sight of a dark colored box next to his door.

 

It hadn’t been there when he left.

 

He drew his sidearm on instinct and approached slowly, mindful of the black shadows at the corners of his porch.

 

Nothing shifted as he slipped up the stairs and approached the box, which upon closer inspection appeared to him to be wrapped in pewter-colored paper with a soft sheen. He nudged a corner of it with the barrel of his gun and found it quite light.

 

His breath frosted as he exhaled sharply, now certain he had overreacted. He holstered his gun and picked up the box, inspecting the sender’s address.

 

Baltimore _._

 

Of course.

 

_Bastard._

 

Will held the box above his head as he fought his way through a flood tide of furry bodies. He attempted to keep them all in the house, but gave up when he realized they hadn’t been out all day. It was a miracle he wasn’t greeted by any accidents inside the house. Then again, they’d probably been starved as well and unlikely to have anything in their stomachs to expel.

 

The door creaked shut behind him, and he made a mental note to oil the hinges later in the weekend.

 

First, Will stripped the package of its outer layer of wrapping paper. It was thick, but it had probably been waiting on his doorstep since around 4 PM yesterday evening and had dampened as it soaked up some of the snowmelt from the wooden slats of Will’s porch. There wasn’t enough lighting in the room for Will to read the delicate script embossed on the shiny, black cardboard surface, but the name of Hannibal’s favored bespoke clothier was probably written somewhere in the center of the decorative seal.

 

_Dear Will,_

 

_You will forgive me. I hadn’t the time to arrange for a proper fitting, but I believe this will do. It occurred to me that museum gallery openings are not the types of events you frequent. Since you are indulging me, I thought I might have the privilege of indulging you._

 

_Hannibal Lecter_

 

Will lifted the lid of the box to the sound of lightly rustling tissue paper. He almost threw the lid off to the side somewhere, near his front door, but he thought better of it. The dogs would come in soon and they would likely track in all manner of dirt and grime. Instead, he tucked it under the bottom of the box for the time being and pulled the edges of the tissue paper open.

 

The contents of the box were clearly personal selections. Hannibal had paid mind to Will’s “taste”, and steered clear of the ostentatious pattern mixes that the older man seemed to prefer for himself. It was still a touch outspoken for Will — the whole suit jacket gave off a rich, navy metallic sheen and he suspected the pants matched — but the shirt beneath was plain white.

 

Will imagined Hannibal calling out specifications to a sharply dressed salesman. He wondered if Hannibal knew exactly what he had wanted for Will, or if he had considered multiple options. A gift of clothing sent a very clear message...probably. Will couldn’t say.

 

Hannibal was subject to a very peculiar cadre of whims. It seemed just as likely that Hannibal simply could not abide by Will’s usual wardrobe when it came to engaging in a true social calling. But, a heated thought pricked forward from the back of Will’s mind. What if Hannibal did send the clothing with all its various insinuations implied? He wanted to clothe Will. Did he want to unclothe him as well?

 

He shivered as Winston barked for his attention from the other side of the shut screen door.

 

“Coming, buddy. Got...distracted.”

 

Will closed the box and opened the door while the rest of the dogs barreled quickly back inside behind Winston. He locked the door behind them and toed off his shoes in the entryway. Will took about four steps to the kitchen before he felt wetness leach into his sock.

 

“Fuck, I’m the worst.” At that moment, Will realized he had been gone for two days – so much for no accidents. He knew he’d probably find more around the house over the next day. It wasn’t the first time he had gotten caught up in the job and done something similar, but he felt wretched all the same. He peeled his sock off and trotted guiltily into the kitchen to prepare three meals worth of food for everybody while they devolved into a chorus of plaintive yaps and howls.

 

“Next time, I’m gonna have to ask Alana to take care of you guys when I’m being such a fuck-up, huh? You all like her. She’ll probably give you more food than me too. She’s more responsible than me; never sleeps all night at work…”

  
Will took care of the accidents he noticed before falling asleep on the couch with Buster curled up on his chest. The ruckus had distracted him from work and Hannibal long enough for him to sink into a deep sleep.

 


	5. go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will meets Hannibal at the Baltimore Museum of Art to see the exhibition Hannibal invited him to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LOLOLOLOLOLOL...Sorry for the one-sentence summary, but that's about all she wrote. That being said, a night out with Hannibal can lead to a lot of tension and frustration.
> 
> Please enjoy, comment when you can :) It encourages us to keep the one-a-day pace.

Following his poor performance at the dinner he had invited Hannibal to, Will made a concerted effort to be timely and well put together. He was aware this meant that he was back in the thick of it, that he had situated himself inside Hannibal’s web. It wouldn’t help to dwell on it now, he reasoned, grim. However, he had promised, and was in his own troubled way very anxious to meet with Hannibal again.

 

At 4 PM, Will fed his dogs and showered. He put on an undershirt and boxer briefs, and let the dogs outside to relieve themselves. He ushered them back indoors at 4:30, but he had to arrange an unplanned search party to get Buster back in the house. Will relocated the box that Hannibal had delivered to his house two days ago at 4:45 and laid the contents out on his bed. He carefully dressed himself in the white button up – fastening all the buttons up to his collar – before shrugging into the dark blue checked suit jacket and pants.

 

This brought him to 5:20 when he decided to forego his aftershave – since Hannibal had commented on it in the pub – but upon looking in the mirror, he realized his undershirt looked ridiculous under a shirt that was clearly not intended to be worn with one. He wrestled himself out of his clothes, and started over without an undershirt this time. A pocket square and cufflinks were included in a smaller, tissue-lined box that had sat nestled above the v-shape of the jacket’s lapel when Will first opened the package. The cufflinks he could manage on his own, but the pocket square looked like a poorly executed magician’s gag no matter how many times he rearranged it. Fed up, Will stuffed it into his inside breast pocket in case Hannibal was displeased by its absence.

 

By the time he locked his doors and transferred his wallet and badge into his back pocket, he felt like he was running late and he drove accordingly to the Baltimore Museum of Art. He pulled into the parking garage at 7:15. It was far too early, but he didn’t want to go anywhere to pass the time. Will sat in his car in the parking lot for a full forty minutes with nothing to do before he exited and made his way to the BMA concourse.

 

Once he was inside, he asked the main receptionist where to go for the “event” beginning at eight o’clock. Fortunately, there was only one – a special art exhibition with an opening reception in Fox Court. Will strode purposefully through the stone halls and melted in with a stream of fashionable men and women on the way to the same event as him.

 

The engineered boundaries created by the thick, off-white columns of Fox Court had been extended outwards with red carpeting and velvet lined stanchions. Will pulled his coat closer around himself and wandered searchingly through the crowd.

 

There was no way he couldn’t have parted the mass of them, at least visually, thanks to his comportment and thick coat. All around him were spangles of gold and silver, shimmering cocktail dresses that caught the soft light on beaded hems and sequined skirts; there were glittering heels and the music of champagne toasts over the string quartet arrayed between a pair of columns.

 

And then there was Will.

 

Hannibal excused himself from the company of a pair of young women (friends, they had said) and drew up to Will with a puzzled sort of smile.

 

“I am beginning to think you have never used a coat check, Will,” he greeted, taking him gently by the elbow. “It’s just this way, if you will.”

 

He was quietly thrilled by the prospect of relieving Will of his coat; it provided an opportunity to unwrap his own gift, and Will might be none the wiser. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time Hannibal had helpfully assisted a guest with their outerwear.

 

The cloakroom was cloistered away in a little corridor off the foyer, manned by a bored teenage attendant. Hannibal stopped Will just before they reached the window and stepped behind him, sliding his hands up his arms and over his shoulders to slip beneath his collar and peel Will’s coat away.

 

“There we are,” he hummed, folding the jacket over his forearm. He traded it to the attendant for a numbered card which he tucked into his breast pocket, then turned back to Will, ushering him only a few steps down the hallway.

 

“Just a moment,” he halted him, observing the length of him head-to-toe. “Impeccable fit,” he assessed, drawing his hands down the smooth fabric of Will’s sleeves. Without so much as a flinch he plucked open the top three buttons of Will’s shirt, folding the points of his collar aside, and smoothing them down over his chest.

 

A small, private smile quirked the corners of his mouth. “There we are,” he said. “Much better.”

 

He could see the rise and fall of Will’s chest with his breathing through the tight fit of the fabric, and allowed his eyes to linger. He thought of slipping his hands under the satin-lined jacket and drawing his hands over the lean tightness of Will’s flanks, which he imagined would flutter like sparrows’ wings under his palms.

 

Instead he led him back toward the reception by the shoulder. “I’m glad you were able to come, Will. I had thought after your exit last time you might be indisposed.”

 

“Yeah,” Will chewed at the inside of his cheek. He had felt bad for being late to his dinner with Hannibal the other night. It had completely escaped his notice that he had left in possibly a worse fashion than he had arrived.

 

“Ummm…” he looked down, but when his eyes turned back upwards to regard Hannibal, there was a bashful calmness in the tones of blue. “Pocket square really isn’t in my dictionary, so I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it,” Will turned his hand over in front of Hannibal and offered it to him. “Could you?” he finished lamely.

 

It charmed Hannibal that Will, who lived so simply and had so little use for material things, still knew how to offer precious gifts — in this case, the opportunity to help him. Will gave by asking.

 

“Of course,” Hannibal replied, taking up the square by its corners and then folding it in half. Several more deft folds and it came to a multi-pointed shape, which Hannibal somehow preserved as he parted Will’s breast pocket with two fingers and slid the square inside.

 

It was the same fabric as Hannibal’s tie, Will realized numbly.

 

“Shall we?”

 

Will nodded and did his best to train his expression into something bland. He tried very hard because he knew his heartbeat would betray him and he wasn’t about to look as absolutely frayed as he felt.

 

“We shall,” Will answered with a nervous chuckle exhaled out through his nose. “I never really asked, but what exactly are we here to see?”

 

“A new exhibit,” Hannibal explained evenly, “rarer pieces of Renaissance painting. Some are on loan from Germany and France. The centerpiece is, of course,” as he spoke they entered the main court again, where the lights had dimmed and the quartet had picked up volume as the appointed moment came, “Sandro Botticelli’s _Saint Sebastian._ ”

 

The roar of the crowd lowered to a murmur as a curator spoke into a microphone, welcoming the guests and remarking briefly upon the exhibit. Hannibal fixed his eyes on her and listened intently.

 

When she had concluded her introduction, the lights brightened again and the hall began to empty as the crowd moved with her like a procession into the gallery space beyond the reception hall, where the new exhibit was arrayed as in an opulent Renaissance villa, each small piece leading the eye to the one in the center rear of the room.

 

The painting was nearly life-size, tall and narrow, featuring an almost-nude young man in repose. Hannibal allowed it to catch him off his guard all over again, first glancing over it and then letting it draw him back, as a lover glimpsed across a crowd.

 

The figure was slender and lean, his arms secured behind the tree he had been affixed to. His hips canted to one side and his chin inclined to the right, strong shoulders slant, keen features elegant in quiet defiance. Only a gauzy white shroud slung low over his hips obscured his sex, though the graceful lines of his tight abdominal muscles suggested it. The young saint was studded with arrows, and the martyr’s crown had already begun to take shape as a translucent halo around his thick dark curls, but he seemed nonetheless confident and noble, prepared if not eager to give himself up to God.

 

“Beauty will always be in the eye of the beholder,” Will murmured under his breath. Hannibal quirked a brow in obvious disagreement.

 

Will’s eyes scanned the room and his first instinct was that he had seen it all. That would be the end of it. However, he was a guest, and when he turned to look at Hannibal, he smiled indulgently at the wonder he saw in the other man’s eyes. Still, Will could not refrain from stirring the conversation a bit.

 

“I can’t speak for the other paintings since they’re clearly playing second fiddle to this Saint Sebastian. But, art like this always seemed misguided to me.”

 

“Oh yes?”

 

Will discreetly pointed at the bared thigh stuck through with an arrow. “It’s — morbid. Really. Ask anyone in the field and they’ll say there’s something they wish they’d never seen. Art often takes these kinds of horrors and aestheticizes them. We see it, and we fetishize it,” Will spoke without looking at Hannibal. “It can make savages of us all while we dress up in fanfare and pretend the desire has been cast out from us like the devil.”

 

Hannibal listened, eyebrows raised in muted surprise. He didn’t think he had ever seen Will so affected by an artwork, aside from the ones he himself had provided him in less genteel settings.

 

“I agree with you,” he returned at last, speaking low and even, beneath the din of the crowd and clinking of champagne flutes. “But rather in reverse, I think. It is a pity _horrors_ like this need aestheticizing to begin with. If all monsters were as attentive to detail as your _gashadokuro,_ we wouldn’t need painters to make up for their artlessness.”

 

He regarded the painting once more. It wasn’t lost on him that Botticelli’s Sebastian bore more than a passing resemblance to Will: the same dark halo of curls, the same thin, straight nose and shapely reddish lips, narrow chin, smooth, strong throat.

 

It didn’t seem lost on the exhibit’s visitors, either; as they passed by, two women in glittering cocktail dresses murmured to one another, their smiling eyes following the length of Will from head to toe.

 

“More to the point, I think Sebastian agrees with you,” Hannibal added, allowing the double entendre a moment to bloom. “ _His eyes grow naked with pain,_ Rilke wrote, _until they deny something, not worth the trouble, filling with scorn as they come to relinquish those who would kill a beautiful thing._ The painting is a lament for ruined beauty.”

 

He plucked a pair of champagne glasses off a passing tray, offering one to Will by its delicate stem.

 

Will thanked Hannibal as he took the champagne in hand and tilted it in the direction of Hannibal’s glass without clinking the rims together as a symbolic gesture. When he brought the glass to his lips, he noticed that an older woman, with either a young relative or nurse, had raised her eyes in his direction.

 

The attention was disconcerting until he noticed the younger woman with her was looking too, with a shy smile on her lips. She tucked loose strands of hair behind her ear and glanced away when she noticed Will was looking back. Will raised his eyebrows with a self-satisfied expression of contemplation on his face.

 

He gazed down at the suit that Hannibal had dressed him in, and realized it probably flattered him more than he’d recognized. He took a sudden, ill-advised gulp of champagne.

 

“Hah..too fast. Been a while since I’ve had something with bubbles in it.” Will cleared his throat and pounded his closed fist to his chest twice in quick succession for good measure. “Anyway, I think something is more beautiful when it’s not stuck through with pins like a Christmas turkey. Feel free to disagree.”

 

“I will take you up on that offer,” Hannibal supplied pleasantly, “and I think you might be in the minority on that count, Will. Not that aesthetics are democratic, but everyone seems quite taken with him.”

 

Of course, there were other pieces in the exhibit, and Hannibal imagined it would seem rude to linger on just the one. He braced his hand gently against the small of Will’s back, guiding him along as they strolled past the other artworks on display. He leaned in, speaking in a low, discreet tone.

 

“Have there been any developments in your case?”

 

The timing of the comment along with the gesture seemed calculated, and honestly no more intrusive than any other way Hannibal had handled him before. Of course, context accounted for nearly everything. In private, the touches somehow seemed _less_ private — and less taboo.

 

Hannibal looked charmed, doting even, as he ushered Will forward.

 

“I’m really doing my best to stay away from my case right now,” Will answered.  “Had a fairly exhausting Friday.” His fight with Jack still rang in his ears and clashed with the gentle music of the quartet in the center of the room. Will placed his empty glass on a convenient tray before lifting another.

 

“I see,” Hannibal answered, genially.

 

At that moment, following the line of Hannibal’s rapt gaze from his slate colored eyes to the subtle wounds in the saint’s vulnerable abdomen, a strange feeling settled over Will like a haze. How many corpses, he mused idly, had Hannibal regarded in exactly this way? Did he find them beautiful, did he suppose the things he did to their bodies made them more so?

 

Everyone else in the room seemed to fade into bland tones of grey; even the paintings lost their color, and the lights appeared to dim. Only Hannibal stood out in brilliant relief, so alive Will thought he could see the rushing of his blood in the vibrancy of his skin.

 

_Hannibal can kill._

 

The thought didn’t chill him as it usually did. Instead he felt a key turn in his mind and a novel realization opened up to him shade by shade. Hannibal could kill, and that could, at times, serve a higher purpose.

 

The man seemed to him bathed in light. Will licked his lips and snatched up another flute of champagne from a passing tray, putting it away faster than was appropriate.

 

_Hannibal can kill._

 

\---

 

It was icy and black out by the time the exhibit closed, and Will found himself drinking in the frosty night air in a vain effort to sober up before getting behind the wheel.

 

“Oh, shit.”

 

Standing beside Hannibal on the steps of the museum, he could plainly see the garage had closed for the night.

 

“Locked in?” Hannibal asked lightly.

 

“Looks like it.”

 

“Ah…” Will handled his keys inside his pocket, pressing his lips together in consternation. “Guess I should call a cab.”

 

“Nonsense, Will. I’ll take you home.”

 

He flushed. Of course Hannibal had the sense not to park in a garage without checking when it would close.

 

“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble…”

 

Hannibal led him to where he was parked — a VIP spot near the museum entrance, reserved for honored guests and board members. Will slid into the passenger seat of the Bentley, eyeing the enameled dash with unrestrained interest.

 

“Do let me know if you grow too warm,” Hannibal instructed lightly, adjusting the air conditioning controls. Will’s eyes fixed on his leather driving gloves.

 

“Yeah,” he muttered, “thanks.”

 

The night felt long. Will couldn’t even estimate how long he had spent in Hannibal’s company. It felt like hours and hours, and not in an unpleasant way; he could again smell that rich, woody cologne on the fibers of his clothes, as he had often noticed when they were consulting more formally before.

 

His mind swam with possibilities. It seemed very unlikely they were going to be able to arrest Sawada based on the evidence Will had gathered rather deceptively, and he wasn’t sure any of it would stand up in court at any rate due to his deceit. And while time dragged on Sawada would keep taking them, one by one…

 

“Something the matter, Will?”

 

Hannibal seemed perfectly at home in his long dark wool coat, hands easily resting on the wheel, leather on leather. Will watched streetlights shade his sharp features in bands of neon and shadow.

 

“No,” Will said, transfixed, “nothing.”

 

_Hannibal can kill._

 

Will told himself it was the champagne slowly warming him from inside.

 

“Did you enjoy the exhibit?” Hannibal asked lightly, eyes ahead on the dark road.

 

“It was...something else,” Will returned. “Botticelli. Where’d you get your taste for him?”

 

“In Paris, as a medical student. The university was located near a museum. I would go walking there to clear my thoughts, and...was always glad to see his work.”

 

“That’s all?” Will asked, skeptical. Nothing with Hannibal was ever so simple.

 

He watched Hannibal’s sharp smile in profile.

 

“Love affairs have been built on less, Will.”

 

Will fixed his eyes on the road ahead. He was immediately aware of his hands: one in his lap, the other on the center console. If he moved his left hand even a few inches, he could touch Hannibal’s thigh.

 

He breathed and resolved to stay very still.

 

\---

 

“Here we are.”

 

Hannibal cut the ignition in Will’s driveway and it startled Will; he had been hypnotized by the dark road and subtle vibrations around him. Up ahead his windows glowed softly in the night. He could hear his dogs begin to bark.

 

Will swallowed thickly and wiggled his fingers, almost as if he had woken from sleep. The console had long since warmed under the weight of his hand. He gathered his coat more tightly around him and begrudgingly popped the car lock.

 

He stilled for a moment and looked out of the windshield. Without turning to look at Hannibal just yet, he licked his lips. “Did you want to come in?” He turned now and lifted an eyebrow with a tilt of his head, “For a drink?”

 

Without waiting for a response, Will extracted himself from the car and started to walk through the slush towards his porch.

 

Hannibal didn’t bother masking the small, curious smile that quirked the corners of his mouth up. He followed Will in the semi-darkness, gloved hands in the pockets of his trench coat.

 

“I have a rather long drive home, I’m afraid,” he replied gently, stepping up onto the platform of Will’s porch. The lantern mounted by the door flickered on, and Hannibal could hear the chorus of whines and barks from just behind the door. “I’m afraid if I come inside, it will be difficult to leave.”

 

“But,” Hannibal took a step, then, short and unremarkable other than for the fact that it cleared the last shred of distance between them, and allowed him to bring his fingertips to rest on Will’s cheek as though to still him as he leaned in and brushed his lips against the other’s, breathing in his taste. “I do appreciate the invitation.”

 

Will’s first reaction was to resist the kiss, having heard Hannibal’s refusal. It burned somewhere deep in him where his better sense lived and made it much easier to do something reckless. He grabbed the lapel of Hannibal’s trench coat in a tight grip and pulled him forward into a deeper kiss.

 

Yet Hannibal still seemed to anticipate him, even in his caprice: He opened his mouth and turned to slot his mouth with Will’s, and slid the serpentine tip of his tongue along the other’s lower lip.

 

There were traces of champagne on his tongue, and the clean taste of the country air. Mostly he tasted like himself, like Hannibal knew he would based on his scent. He had drawn near enough before to imagine this.

 

He allowed himself one liberty. He slid his hand, leather-gloved and warm, underneath Will’s coat, under his blazer, over the thin elastic fabric of his shirt, and felt his flank flutter under his palm.

 

“Will,” he hummed, steam between their mouths.

 

Will was already walking himself back against the door. He pulled Hannibal with him so that Will’s body was pinned between Hannibal’s warmth and the chill of chipped-paint wood and even colder glass panes.

 

“There are only a very limited number of things you could want to say to me right now. Some of them more disappointing than others.” He leaned in and nosed at the fragrant warmth hidden underneath the collar of Hannibal’s jacket. His own hand, cold as it had gotten between the car and his front door, sneaked into the folds of the trench coat and palmed at Hannibal’s cock.

 

“Thank you for a lovely evening,” Hannibal said at last, but his voice was husky and thick. His body tensed when Will’s palm found him and he slid his hand from the other’s waist to his shoulder, stilling him. He pulled away with one last long, lingering suck of his lower lip, then stepped back, righting himself.

 

“Good night, Will. Sleep well. We should spend time together again soon.”

  
It would indeed be a long drive back.


	6. roku

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will checks in with Jack about their investigation and receives answers he doesn't like. He goes to his standing appointment with Hannibal to talk about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a beautiful day. Hope you enjoy this. We're ramping up to the climax. Pun definitely intended.
> 
> Thank you for all the lovely comments and kudos and general interest in this story. Keep it coming, and we will keep it coming for you <3<3<3

“I’ve been asked by administration to have you leave your umbrellas, coats, and other various rain-soaked effects at the door. A coat rack and bin have been provided. I’ll turn up the heater while you all get to your seats.”

 

Will fiddled with the thermostat. Once the room was filled, he flicked off the switches and pulled the projector remote from his jacket pocket.

 

“The Chesapeake Ripper.” Will’s first slide featured a picture of the ‘wound man’ -- the last confirmed kill of the Chesapeake Ripper before he began again after the Minnesota Shrike case. He paced around to the front of his desk and changed the picture to the FBI personnel portrait of Miriam Lass. She did not smile; she was cunning -- too cunning for her own good.

 

“Miriam Lass.” A beat. “I did not catch the Chesapeake Ripper. It’s been a challenge to assemble this presentation for you because it feels incomplete. ”

 

Will leaned back against his desk with his arms braced out beside him. He looked down at the floor and thought about Hannibal. The case of the Chesapeake Ripper was incomplete because the man was still at large. Will did not raise his face again until he heard the beginnings of whispers. He did not want to give too much away.

 

Through a clenched jaw, Will continued, “Heroism is not such a clear cut principle. Ms. Lass thought she was being heroic when she took it upon herself to investigate a promising lead on her own despite only being a trainee.” Will felt the thrill of his own hypocrisy boil up inside of him, but did not betray it in his speech.

 

“Some would call that heroic. I would say that Ms. Lass was very lucky. And if luck could solve all of our cases, we wouldn’t need an FBI.”

 

Will recalled his work in the Garrett Jacob Hobbes case.

 

_Just dumb luck and bad bookkeeping_...and a giftwrapped crime scene from Hannibal.

 

The next slide was a compilation of the most recent Chesapeake Ripper murders starting with Cassie Boyle. “Don’t count on luck.”

 

Hannibal’s kiss still felt warm on his lips. He was in the room around Will, cloaked in gore and sprouting devil’s horns. Will felt faint just thinking of his scent, remembering how hot his skin was just underneath the collar of his coat.

 

“Still. We can learn from Ms. Lass and how she discovered the Chesapeake Ripper. Her thinking should be lauded even if her lapse in judgment should serve as a cautionary tale.”

 

It felt strange rehearsing the story of Lass’ capture and collar of Chilton. All of it was farce; the whole story, and here he was, teaching it to credulous academy students. He was glad he couldn’t see their faces through the glare of the projector in the dark.

 

\---

 

“I hear you gave the jackals what they wanted. A presentation on the Chesapeake Ripper...” Jack didn’t look up from his paperwork when Will entered his office and deposited himself with crossed legs and crossed arms on the armrest of Jack’s chair.

 

“No, I gave them what you wanted, Jack,” Will pulled his glasses off to clean a smudge with the sleeve of his shirt. “I don’t intend to provide you with any more Miriam Lasses. You can thank me by telling me what you did with my very large haystack.”

 

Jack finished writing notes on the report he had been working on before Will came into his office, then grabbed a few papers from the printer behind him.

 

“You gave me two needles with my haystack, Will. There was only one when I left you the other night,” Jack handed Will the papers. There were two suspect reports. One for Goemon Sawada, the other for a man named Takeshi Aihara. Will browsed both reports, but there was nothing of any value.

 

“I gave you Sawada,” Will’s brow creased in a troubled expression as he shook his head, “Aihara was just your busy work for me.”

 

“Turns out I gave myself some busy work too,” when Will fixed him with an angry look, Jack’s shoulders slumped in exasperation. “Come on, Graham! The guys have almost identical profiles. Both are middle-aged Japanese men down on their luck. Sawada was in jail for four years, Aihara for two -- out early on good behavior, but psychopaths, you know, sometimes they can be charming. They’re both registered members at Capital Bikeshare and they’re not particularly good at providing us with workable alibis.”

 

“Sawada was at the crime scene, Jack,” Will’s foot began to bounce and he clenched his jaw to suppress his frustration.

 

“Yeah, I know Sawada was at the crime scene. His house is also closer. But other than that, we got nothing. We turned his whole place upside down with a search warrant -- which I obtained legally,” Jack raised his eyebrows, dropped his chin, and paused to make sure his point stuck with Will. “It’s almost guaranteed this son of a bitch is our guy, but there’s nothing I can do. Our hands are tied.”

 

“Hands…” Will mulled over the word under his breath.

 

“There is no such thing as a perfect crime, Will. As much as you and I like these guys for the murders, if there’s no evidence, I’ve got to believe it’s not them.”

 

“Not these guys -- one guy. Sawada. Did you scrape under his fingernails for soil?” Will was determined to shut this case once and for all.

 

“We processed them both. There was nothing to link either man to the crime. We have no idea where he’s keeping the bodies you told us he still has. I need you to focus on the endgame, Graham. Think...if neither of these guys is our killer, who is?”

 

“Sawada.”

 

“Tell me what rule you want me to break to catch this guy, Will!” Jack was clearly at the end of his rope. “You like Sawada for the murders. Fine, give me the evidence. Until then, I have to check all the rest of the names you gave me on this list,” he held his arms spread out in front of him, waiting on suggestions from Will.

 

“You’re gonna regret it. Sawada’s the one and this is time — time that we don’t have to waste. There are people dying, and nobody cares about them but me,” Will flashed a dark look in Jack’s direction.

 

“We all care about them. That’s why I’m going to keep working. I am going to do my job.” Jack held his face in his hands for a solid minute. Without looking up, Jack addressed Will, “I’ll keep a tail on Sawada, but that’s the best I can do.”

 

“Yet you expect me to do better,” Will left the room and the useless reports on Jack’s desk.

 

He could do better.

 

Will didn’t return to his desk except to collect his bag and coat. He left work early that day, and resolved to find himself a quiet place to collect himself. He made it to a cafe close enough that he didn’t have to repark his car.

 

The barista asked him for his order and Will just pointed to the machine that dispensed whatever was on tap for the day. He fished his wallet out of his pocket and gave her a five-dollar bill, noting she should keep the change as a tip.

 

With his coffee in hand, Will selected a table in the darkest corner of the room, beneath a hanging plant. He found Hannibal’s number on his phone and lifted it to his face. The dial tone rang, muffled by his own heartbeat.

 

“Hello,” Hannibal’s voice was light and pleasant on the other side. Surely he had been aware Will was calling even before he spoke. It was this thought that kept Will silent on his end of the phone call. “Will?” Hannibal probed gently.

 

“Yep. Sorry. It’s loud in here. Anyway, I was wondering if my standing appointment would still be open for tonight?”

 

“That is what it means to have a standing appointment,” Will imagined he heard a faint hint of disappointment in the doctor’s voice.

 

“I’d like to -- I’d like to come in to talk to you, tonight.”

 

“As you wish, Will. I’ll see you at 7:30?”

 

“Maybe 7:00 if you’re free.”

 

“7:00 it is. Goodbye.”

 

“Bye,” Will turned off his phone and began drinking his coffee.

 

\---

 

Will was on time. That was unusual. It piqued Hannibal’s curiosity to find him there in his waiting room, windblown and typically disheveled, right as the clock toned seven.

 

“Will,” he greeted genially, “good evening. Please, come in.”

 

He invited him with a sweeping motion and a cordial step to the side.

 

“I have to admit,” Will didn’t wait for Hannibal to remove his coat for him. Instead he shrugged out of it on his own and draped it over the coatrack by the door. Hannibal had lit a fire in his office hearth to combat the cold and the wetness of the storm outside. “I admit I’m here on business, but that probably wouldn’t surprise you.”

 

Will placed his workbag on the wooden chair in front of Hannibal’s desk and stood next to it, rooting around for a very thin file this time.

 

It didn’t surprise Hannibal, of course, but he _was_ intrigued. Eyebrows raised, he approached his desk, fingertips resting on its polished surface as he watched Will rifle through his bag.

 

“I _am_ surprised Ms. Lounds hasn’t had much to say about this case of yours,” he supplied evenly. “Perhaps her old source has withered up.”

 

“I count myself lucky whenever she’s not around and never question the good fortune. Here we are…” Will pulled the folder from his bag and laid it on the desk in front of Hannibal.

 

“This is a digitally reconstructed picture of the crime scene. It’s a composite of various news sources and amateur shots since there were no functioning security cameras in the area.” Will flipped the folder open and spread the six pieces of the resized composite image into their correct places. He lifted his eyes, but stayed hunched over and fixed Hannibal in his gaze. “What do you see?”

 

Hannibal’s eyes followed the contours of the photographs, seeming to catalogue every detail instantaneously. His finger traced over a few details, the line of a shadow here, the glint off a puddle there. Then it fell on Sawada.

 

“Is he keeping them underground, by any chance?”

 

A stiff nod. “Price found schist and saprolite in the one they pulled out of the river.”

 

Will walked around the desk and stood next to Hannibal, looking at the pictures from the doctor’s -- a killer’s -- perspective.

 

“In the 1970s there was an abortive attempt to dig tunnels for the D.C. metro system near the river. But the water table extended further inland than the engineers’ equipment had predicted, and the project was abandoned. A few miles of tunnel remain, sealed at the surface. After the metro expansion was closed, of course, the city sold the land to developers, and they built warehouses and factories over the original site. Textiles, mostly.”

 

Will brought out a larger picture. This one was a close-up of Sawada. It stood to reason, he thought, that Sawada would be killing them nearby: transporting them would be safer that way.

 

Hannibal’s eyes came to linger on Sawada’s dirty fingernails, the faint indigo hue staining his fingertips.

 

Without ever knowing, Hannibal had come to the same conclusion as Will had. Hannibal’s earlier mention of Freddie Lounds had her voice echoing in Will’s head.

 

_To catch a killer…_

 

He was trying to catch a killer. Will looked at this picture, again, from Hannibal’s perspective. His lips tightened and he pawed ineffectively at his phone in his pocket. “I should call Jack.”

 

“And tell him what?” Hannibal probed. “I have the sense that I’m not informing you of anything you didn’t already know, Will.”

 

He knew Will had tussled with Jack and imagined it was over this very inductive line of reasoning. Jack trusted Will, but couldn’t understand him. With Hannibal it was often the opposite.

 

He laid his hand on the back of Will’s neck.

 

“Did you come here strictly for my opinion of these photographs?”

 

“I…” Will gathered the pictures in a pile and shut the folder again. “I’ll just ask him to send someone to investigate. Something will turn up, and it will be out of my hands.”

His breathing quickened and goosebumps rose under Hannibal’s touch.

 

“Someone to investigate _what,_ Will?”

 

He let the observation hang heavy in the air, with its unspoken offer suspended between them on tension wire.

 

Suddenly, Will’s throat felt very dry. What had he come to Hannibal for -- business?

 

_Hannibal can kill. In this case it could serve a higher purpose._

 

“...kill him…” The first utterance was muddled by the crackle of the fire behind them.

 

“I want you to kill him. Goemon Sawada.”

 

The hand on the back of his neck tightened in that instant, grasping him by his nape and pulling him back from the desk. Hannibal held him steady as he stumbled and then jerked him forward, fastening his lips to Will’s. He forced his mouth open with a thumb tight on his jaw and tasted him deeply, his opposite hand splaying open against his lower belly and sliding low and lower, beneath the fly of his pants.

 

A jumble of less than graceful sounds and half-words fell out of Will’s mouth at the sudden rough handling. Will bit at Hannibal’s finger and tasted blood.

 

He remembered laughing incredulously in Jack Crawford’s face about a year ago when he was explaining his profile for Cassie Boyle’s murderer.

 

_What kind of psychopath is he, Will?_

 

_The kind I’ve never seen. He has no traceable motive…_

 

But this murder would have a motive. This was not a crime Hannibal would commit. It was Will’s motive and Will’s murder and the very prospect of it had Hannibal’s blood rushing hard, pounding in his ears.

 

Hannibal licked his blood from Will’s lips and grasped the other’s hips in each hand, lifting him up bodily onto the desk. There his palms slid roughly from hip to thigh and spread Will’s legs insistently, making space for Hannibal to fit between them.

 

He was hard already, almost aching. His erection stood out in a thick line behind the fabric of his slacks and he ground himself against Will, panting into his mouth.

 

Distantly, Will noted there must have been a pen or something beneath the left side of his ass. It poked him in the back of his thigh as Hannibal pushed him harder against the desk.

 

Will tried to sneak his hand between the two of them and flick the button open of either of their pants, but was thwarted by Hannibal’s thrusting each time. He abandoned his attempts and wrapped his arms around Hannibal’s shoulders so he could lift himself and grind back.

 

When Will returned his undulation and tightened his arms around him, Hannibal nearly lost all resolve — why not lay him back then and there and —

 

His mind lingered on the way Will’s lean body had felt underneath the shirt Hannibal bought him, and the stretch of the fabric over his firm pectorals. He would allow himself this, he reasoned, as a reward for his restraint.

 

He began picking Will’s shirt buttons open in between gasping, blood-laced kisses, finally pulling away from bruised lips to run his tongue over one of Will’s tightened, dusky nipples. He caught the little peak of flesh in his teeth and sucked, teasing with his tongue as his fingers found the other.

 

“Hannibal...mmmm -- more…” Will’s eyelids twitched over closed eyes. They were shined and glossy with his sudden, fevered lust. His usually pale skin had turned red and splotchy under Hannibal’s ministrations.

 

He brought his hands up again and attempted to avail Hannibal of his slacks one more time as he panted openly into Hannibal’s hair -- his nostrils flaring as he tried to catch his breath.

 

Hannibal could feel Will’s arousal though their clothes; he was hard and shivering, his breath catching and pulse rising with every touch. Hannibal left his nipples reddened and slick, kissing his way back up his chest and neck to sink his teeth lightly into the soft skin of his jugular.

 

“Will,” he breathed against him. He had found his mouth again, and had pulled him tight against him again, bucking his hips as though they were fucking fully clothed.

 

At that point, it was all Will could do to hold onto Hannibal as he was virtually plowed into. His hands scrabbled for purchase as he hooked them underneath Hannibal’s armpits and held onto his shoulders from the back.

 

Will tightened the grip of his thighs around Hannibal’s waist and whimpered softly as he was lifted from the desk each time Hannibal thrust forward. His own hips moved faster, but off tempo, as he chased an orgasm that was nearly upon him.

 

Somewhere in his rational thoughts Hannibal knew now wasn’t the time; he could feel Will tensing minutely, preparing to come, and it wouldn’t do, he thought, to share the first orgasm between them unobserved. Though, it didn’t escape his attention that Will had come so near to it with only rough handling, nipple stimulation, and an imitation of the rhythm of penetration…

 

“Will,” he murmured again, choked, breathing hard. His hands had stilled and he let Will settle down. Licking his lips, he swallowed.

 

“I had meant to ask you a favor.”

 

Will made a sound of protest when Hannibal pushed him back so he was seated more firmly on the edge of the desk. He thought of telling Hannibal to fuck off and just continuing to work himself to completion against Hannibal’s body.

 

However, some better mannered part of himself sat up straighter and slowed his breathing through his nose as he replied raggedly, “A favor?”

 

“Yes, I,” he took a deep breath and tried not to offer eye contact. “I would ask you to teach my class next Thursday afternoon. I will be indisposed.”

 

“Yeah, sure, whatever --” Will pulled Hannibal closer to him with his legs and used the forced calm as an opportunity to undo the buckle of Hannibal’s belt. But Hannibal’s hands closed gently over Will’s.

 

“I have a lecture prepared,” he went on, as though their conversation had never been interrupted by almost frenzied rutting. “You could take my notes, if you like.”

 

“You really?” Will couldn’t believe the turn in their night, but, of course, he had learned not to be particularly surprised by anything Hannibal did -- or didn’t in this case -- do.

 

Will smoothed his hair back into some semblance of order; so well fixed that it was surely a sign of what had just happened. He sighed resignedly and redid the buttons of his shirt. His body slid off of the desk so that his feet touched the floor, but he didn’t bother to tuck the hem of his shirt more securely into the waist of his pants. It just pouched outwards awkwardly at his stomach.

 

“You could probably find a better substitute. Obviously I’ve got a complicated relationship with both psychology and desire.” Will scratched at his head and it knocked his hair back into disarray.

 

“I can’t think of a better substitute than you, Will,” Hannibal supplied easily, walking with a gait unsteadied by arousal. He located a portfolio among his papers, and brought it to Will to tuck into his workbag.

 

“Did you drive here tonight?” he then asked, standing near the door, as though to show him out.

 

Will was somewhat peeved by Hannibal’s dismissive behavior. He would have to admit that he had probably treated a woman this way sometime in his life before, and that perhaps this was his comeuppance.

 

“Ummm…” Will zipped the top of his work bag closed and shouldered it before walking back towards the door and Hannibal standing next to it, “yeah, of course.”

 

“Do you need petrol?” He paused. “Fuel?”

 

“Why would I? No…?” Will was thoroughly confused.

 

“Very well,” Hannibal nodded, offering him a tight smile. There would be no credit card receipt to put him in Baltimore tonight, then, and the less of a link there was between them, the better. He suspected it would at least cross Crawford’s mind that Will had been involved, given that he had already decided upon a suspect.

 

He opened the door, standing beside Will on the threshold.

 

“Will,” he said, laying his hand on the other’s shoulder, “one more thing: Don’t touch yourself.”

 

He nodded as in cordial parting, and went inside.

 

\---

 

It was not often that Will was immediately aware he was in a dream when he woke up in a strange and foreign place. But tonight, when he dreamed he opened his eyes to a black and white world of barren birch trees, he knew he was still asleep somewhere else.

 

Rustling passed through some invisible leaves, and Will attempted to raise his head in order to survey his surroundings more thoroughly. When he did, he felt a rope pressing down across the middle of his trachea, and could move no further lest he choke himself with his strong bindings. He tested his arms and legs as well, but found them similarly bound in many places -- flat against a large, rectangular stone slab. As he tested each body part, his sense of that particular part awakened and returned to him in such a way that he realized he must have felt like a disembodied head before this.

 

Above in the black sky a pale white moon was ensconced in seamless darkness, its brightness illuminating the silvery wood and casting Will’s body in a latticework of shadows. He could feel from the press of the rope that he was naked.

 

Underneath the wind there was a cadence like a drumbeat. Will did not feel afraid, not yet, only curious: he strained to lift his head and look around him, but to little avail. The beat, he realized, was growing louder.

 

Hoofbeats on the hollow earth.

 

A warm current of familiarity stirred in him as the shadow of antlers fell over his body, stretching long, tangling with the shade of the branches. He exhaled deeply, shivering. It was only his stag.

 

_My stag._

 

They were consummating something here, he suddenly knew. The thought did not unsettle him. Instead he wanted to open his legs in invitation, but his knees were already spread wide by the lay of the rope.

 

Long-fingered hands swept over his shoulders and the figure above, blacker than the sky, was not the stag but the antlered creature in the shape of a man. It drew near and nearer and Will could feel its breath on his throat, which he strained to bare. Some question passed unspoken between them, and Will said _yes, yes, yes._

 

_Yes, please._

 

Hands grasped the length of his throat and pressed the rope against his skin harder. The creature would not let him speak.

 

He wanted it to take him, breach him, fill up all his empty places, leave him full and sated; he want it to make him something different, something new. His body seemed to twitch in anticipation and he felt a dull, expectant ache inside, where he needed it.

 

\---

 

In Baltimore, Hannibal surveyed his body in his bathroom mirror. Lit by dim sconces built into the tiered, molded-wood walls, the contours of him seemed even sharper, his angles even deeper. It was only thanks to the rush of icy water that he had been able to put his arousal aside and begin to think about murder.

 

And thinking about murder wasn’t, in this case, helping him on the former count. He would be killing for Will, on Will’s request; Will gave by asking, he reminded himself. He was at heart a keen boy from the bayou raised on vestigial French manners, and he did not like to impose. He knew when he was placing himself in debt, and he always meant to pay it back.

 

“Žinoma,” Hannibal murmured to himself, _of course._ He fixed a towel around his waist and withdrew his straight razor and strap from an upper drawer, sharpening the blade in long, easy strokes as he spoke low to no one. “Jūs norite turėti jokio kito pasirinkimo.” _You want to be given no other choice._

 

Emotion like this was almost foreign to him: He wanted to possess him, but over and over, not simply once in an act of total conquest.

 

This request signaled a change in Will that Hannibal had acted as midwife to for some time now, and the Will being born had possessed his heart since he had seen glimmers of him underneath the domesticated and neurotic profiler seated in Jack Crawford’s office.

 

_I will give you no choice, Will,_ Hannibal promised himself.

  
He knew he didn’t have one either, and hadn’t for some time.

 


	7. shichi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal gets things done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all your awesome comments! Let us know what you think of this one.

 

Will woke disoriented and hard, his heart racing. He swept his hand over his face and pressed it hard into his mouth to quiet his panting. 

 

Normally, he would just — but Hannibal had said not to, and Will felt further in his debt than he ever had before. 

 

Blearily, Will reached for his phone. He pulled up his conversation with Hannibal, but then again, conversation didn’t quite describe it. Will only ever used it to jot off notes to Hannibal. He found that if he left phone messages, they were often jumbled and wandering -- sometimes without even conveying the purpose of his call in the first place. Hannibal, on the other hand, only left phone messages, so Will’s text chat to Hannibal consisted only of messages composed from Will to Hannibal.

 

He scrolled through his history and read through various dinner and appointment confirmations before clicking his cursor to the text box. In a fit of very rash thinking -- but not rash enough -- he typed a fairly explicit message into the conversation without sending.

 

_ you have to know i’m going crazy without touching myself...wish you had fucked me _

 

He was angry because he hadn’t been blue-balled this badly since Alana had attempted to fall in love with him. A feeling of sickness roiled up in his stomach as he set his phone off to the side. What if this short affair with Hannibal was the same? Will stumbled to the sink to wash his face and rinse out his stale mouth. When he looked up in the mirror, he wondered if this is what  _ lovesick _ looked like. 

 

Will trudged back to bed and snapped his fingers in the dark. He felt Winston push his head under his palm and he pet the dog until he was calm enough to fall back asleep.

 

\---

 

Will had early classes on Tuesdays, so he spent most of his pre-lunch hours in his lecture room with restless academy students. He didn’t blame them, this storm was persistent and they were probably somewhat stir-crazy since Will presented a far tamer investigation in today’s lecture.

 

By the time he made it to the working side of FBI Headquarters, he realized he must have missed something during his lazy hours spent with even lazier trainees.

 

Everyone was walking quickly enough that he didn’t have to keep his own head down to avoid interaction in the halls. He headed to Jack’s office preemptively, guessing that sooner or later Jack would come to him with more details about the excitement. When he arrived, Jack was already bundled up in his hat and a heavy raincoat.

 

“Good, you’re here. Saves me a trip,” Jack opened a tall cupboard in the back of his office and pulled out a second raincoat for Will.

 

“Where’s the fire?” Will made a swirling gesture in the air with his finger to indicate the general chaos he had encountered on his way to Jack’s office.

 

Jack pointed a remote to the television monitor in the far corner of his office.

 

A correspondent stood in front of an Anacostia construction site in a heavy parka, windblown and bitten with the cold. She was mid-sentence and Will stilled to listen. 

 

“...where police have gathered to seal off the perimeter. Preliminary reports have surfaced of another amalgamated skeletal mass, and Chief Lanier has scheduled a press conference for three-o-clock this afternoon to discuss police findings. Officials in the area have imposed a nine-pm curfew on Anacostia residents and have advised homeless shelters around the city to maximize their capacity for overnight stays. Mayor Bowser has placed emergency shelter orders in effect, meaning public properties will be required to shelter homeless persons overnight if area shelters pass capacity...We’re hearing…” the reporter trailed off, pressing her earpiece into her ear, “we’re hearing the FBI will be on scene shortly —”

 

Jack switched the monitor off. 

 

Will was unmoved. He took the jacket from Jack, but turned down the hall opposite from the one that would lead them to the parking lot.

 

“Where are you going, Graham?”

 

Will pointed towards the break room nonchalantly, “It’s my lunch break, Jack.”

 

When Jack’s face began to turn to a darker shade of red, Will held his hands up in surrender, “To go, Jack. I have a sandwich in the fridge.”

 

\---

 

Will took a cursory look at the scene but spent most of his time in the back seat of the SUV. It was cold enough to sear his throat and he already knew what they wanted him to discover, anyway. Jack, at least, seemed satisfied with the show he made.

 

He wanted to call Hannibal. 

 

But he knew he shouldn’t. Instead he chewed his cuticles as he sat outside the lab, waiting for Price to call him in. 

 

Finally he became too restless and shouldered the glass door open on his own volition, carrying a paper cup of watery cafeteria coffee. 

 

“Got anything?”

 

“A fourth of the femur here came off the one we got out of the river,” Zeller answered brusquely, “probably parts of the pelvis too. We’re not sure. Still running fragments.” 

 

“That’s —”

 

“— not surprising,” Zeller finished, clipped. “Yeah, we know, Will.” 

 

“So the last body was him telling us this is a work in progress,” Will mused as though he hadn’t heard.

 

“Looks like it,” Price chimed in, hunkered down over a faintly glowing microscope. “So far there’s no overlap with the last mass and this one. All new group of victims.” 

 

Will nodded. Of course. He had never imagined Sawada planned to stop at one or even two. 

 

“Keep me updated,” he said on his way out.

 

\---

 

“Dice and Langford Textiles. How may I direct your call?”

 

“Hello, Alan Clayton here. I’m calling in regard to an order I placed with a mister — I’m probably getting this all wrong — Go-e-mon Sa-wa-da?” 

 

“He’s —” the secretary faltered, “let me look up his extension for you.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

There was a furious fluttering, as through an old-fashioned rolodex. 

 

“He’s um — I don’t see an extension for him...he’s a floor worker, so…” 

 

“How strange. I was certain that was the name. Very distinctive.”

 

“Um, let me see…” 

 

Hannibal allowed her a moment to become properly flustered. 

 

“How about this,” he intervened gently, “would it be possible to speak to him just now, if he isn’t busy on the floor?”

 

“He um, he comes in for the night shift…”

 

“Ah. Do you have an idea of when he might be getting in? So sorry to take up your time, dear.”

 

“No, no, it’s no problem, he’ll...he’ll be in at about seven.” 

 

“Wonderful. I’ll try again then. Thanks very much.”

 

\---

 

They sold fish by the docks. Some of it was factory farmed and dyed, shipped in from distant fisheries up the coast; but some was locally caught, modest in size and color, but fresh. At this time of year Hannibal was always alert for fine winter flounder. 

 

He perused the ice-lined cases with his scarf woven tightly around his neck, hardly a buffer against the watery chill. 

 

His eyes found the reddish mottled flank, flecked with brassy spots. Here in the United States they called it lemon sole, though it was neither a sole nor in any sense reminiscent of lemon; but he would’ve known the look of it by any name. 

 

“Pardon me,” he asked the clerk, a middle-aged man who stood behind the counter shucking oysters. “Would it be possible to place two of these on hold to pick up this evening? I have business in the city, but will be finished by dusk.”

 

Yes, the clerk said. It would be possible.

 

\---

 

By the time Will arrived in room C3B on the Johns Hopkins University campus, all of Hannibal’s students were already seated. He strode up to the board and placed his bag down on the lectern. Will tried three whiteboard pens out before he found one that actually worked and wrote his name on the board in dark purple. 

 

“Uh...my name is Will Graham. I am an instructor at the FBI Academy in Quantico. Your professor has asked me to guest lecture today. You have questions already...yes, miss?” Will wiped at his forehead nervously. His lectures at the academy always seemed far less interactive than this would probably be.

 

“Where’s the German guy?” The girl looked expectantly at him, and Will felt offended on Hannibal’s behalf. Apparently she took Will’s silence as a sign that he had not understood her question, so she elaborated, “Dr. Schafer. Where is Dr. Schafer?”

 

Although Will had not been confused before, he suddenly wondered if he had walked into the wrong classroom. He retreated to his bag and dug around for the small portfolio Hannibal had given to him in his office two nights ago. Sure enough, the cover sheet tucked inside of the portfolio noted that Psychology of Desire was taught by a man named Dr. Aurik Schafer. 

 

Will began frantically flipping through the pages of lecture notes -- all handwritten with extremely personalized additions in the margins.

 

The first was a sketched profile of Will’s face, eyes closed but lips gently parted, maybe in sleep or...Will flipped through the rest of the pages and saw different sketches. A charcoal etching this time of a torso. He reached up to his own shoulder subconsciously as his eyes scanned over the bullet scarring in the picture. It was an old memento from New Orleans homicide. How had Hannibal known? 

 

Will could feel eyes on him and knew he must be flushing. His glance flickered up and back down as he wet his lips with his tongue. 

 

Another sketch showed thighs like Botticelli’s Saint Sebastian, a tasteful linen guarding his sex. The next page was more explicit; carved out of a margin, text neatly fitted around, was a drawing of his hand splayed over his soft penis; Hannibal must’ve caught a glimpse, he thought, when he had taken him in for that MRI. Still the sketch was beautiful; the lines rendered delicately and lightly, with a fondness for the vulnerable image they formed. 

 

_ “...the bastard..” _

 

Will felt a lurch in his lower abdomen and quickly shut the portfolio as sweat broke at the back of his neck.

 

“Dr. Schafer...Dr. Schafer thought it might be good for you to learn about more aberrant psychology. Um, I’m here to be the proverbial wet blanket, ma’am. There’s a healthy side of desire,” Will looked down at the portfolio still clutched in his white-knuckled grip, “...and uh - an unhealthy side. Anyway…”

 

Aside from being unable to look at Hannibal’s notes due to the other material mixed in with them, Will had no idea what Hannibal had been teaching them up until this point. Next week, he remembered, they would be taking an exam, and he was professional enough to be concerned that he might contradict Hannibal’s instruction if he attempted to give one of the other man’s lectures in his stead.

 

He dug around in his bag one more time and withdrew a thin usb drive and plugged it into the computer hooked up to the projector.

 

It took him a while to find a suitable case, something lurid and sexually rooted that might actually keep the students’ attention. He was rarely called to consult on cases like this because they were much easier to solve: In most cases, DNA evidence was much more abundant. Furthermore, many people could understand sexual desire, so sexually based crimes rarely required his particular brand of investigative abilities. The idea of a class on the desire of psychology seemed laughable to him for this reason. Why teach something which was in so many ways inherent to human nature?

 

“Will this be on the test?” A young man from the back of the room — who for all intents and purposes looked like he came to the lecture hall to sleep — called out.

 

“No, I imagine your professor just wants to encourage you to think differently,” Hannibal had certainly expressed his desire to force Will to do just that. He failed to mention that ‘Doctor Schafer’ actually had planned a lecture, but Will decided to audible it.

 

It didn’t surprise Will when nobody came to speak with him after the class was finished. Half of the students looked horrified, and he was pretty sure a couple of them had excused themselves partway through his slideshow and never returned.

 

Will removed his usb drive from the school laptop and placed it back in a more sensible pocket of his work bag this time. Then he turned off the laptop itself and unplugged it from the projector in order to return it to the guest services desk of the psychology department staff office. Despite having made up a lecture essentially on the spot, he felt at leisure for the first time in a long time. He watched the retreating backs of students jogging up the steps and out of the room, and stayed far enough behind them so as not to provoke any conversation.

 

With the borrowed laptop tucked under his arm and his work bag clenched in his hand at his side, Will walked across the quad with all its puddles from the recent storms. He returned the laptop and his guest lecturer’s badge, and headed back to his car in the dark.

 

_ Schafer  _ was a new alias, he observed, and as he turned his key in the ignition the thought struck him all at once that Hannibal had just given him roughly seventy corroborators to his alibi. Jack would suspect him, of course, when Sawada turned up dead; but now there could be no question as to where he had been. He sat numb in his car for long moments as the realization sank in. Somewhere in the city, Hannibal was doing what he did best, and only at Will’s behest.

 

\---

 

It was a clear night riven by wind.

 

Frozen gales rushed off the river and roared in the narrow alley. Hannibal could scarcely hear his own footfalls on the cement over the screech of it. He carefully avoided a rivulet of oily water draining down the center of his path and held his quarry out ahead of him, already dessicated. 

 

\---

 

Will didn’t listen to the radio on his way in; he knew what the news was. He steeled himself instead. 

 

The office was quiet save for the rustling of paper and the low din of a news broadcast airing on some monitor in some other room. Will put his paper cup of drive-thru coffee down on his desk and laid his phone and keys down beside it; this was the last thing he did before the back of his collar was snatched in an iron grip and he found himself stumbling over his heels with a yelp of protest, and then finally deposited into an aluminum chair in an interrogation room.

 

“Jesus, Jack.” He massaged his neck where his shirt had dug in. “What’s going on?”

 

“What’s going on? Why don’t  _ you  _ tell  _ me  _ what the hell’s going on, Graham? I get a call at five am. DC beats out by the bay found a head on a pike. You know whose?” 

 

“No.”

 

“Don’t be smart with me, Graham,” Jack loomed over him, jabbing a finger at his chest. “You know damn well —”

 

“I just got in, Jack. I have no idea what happened.” 

 

“Missed the news last night, huh?”

 

“I don’t have a TV. You know that.” 

 

“You got fucking ears, Graham? We’ve been up here since five-thirty in the morning —”

 

“I told you, Jack. I just got in. Catch me up before you book me?”

 

Jack slammed both palms on the table and Will shuddered in alarm, his eyes sliding shut for a long moment. 

 

“Newsflash: Goemon Sawada, your pick for the Anacostia murders, turned up dead last night. Decapitated. Head on a spike. We’ve got no clue where the body is.” 

 

“Jack —”

 

“Where were you last night, Graham?” 

 

“Teaching.”

 

“Bull _ shit  _ you were!” Another echoing slam of his hands; another startle. “I checked your schedule. No classes on Thursdays.”

 

“Teaching at Johns Hopkins. Took on a guest lecture for a colleague.”

 

“That’s convenient.”

 

“It’s just true, Jack. I’ve got seventy-something witnesses. Checked out a laptop, showed my driver’s license for a guest badge. I —” he slid his glasses off, flustered. “I was there late.”

 

“Give me numbers, Graham. Names. You know I have to check this out.” 

 

Will eyed him ruefully. “Last number I called was the psychology department desk. I couldn’t figure out where to park. Go ahead, check my phone. I used one of my Quantico lectures, USB is still in my bag.” 

 

Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t move a muscle. I mean it, Graham. Hands on the table, if you fucking  _ flinch  _ —”

 

“I got it, Jack.”

 

In the hallway people avoided Jack, and he fumed. He’d known Will long enough to have a good idea of when he was hiding something, and he was. Fear roiled underneath his anger: What if Will had done this, what if — what if? By the time he reached Will’s desk to rifle through his workbag and personal effects, he was faintly sick and exceedingly furious. 

 

He handed Will’s USB and laptop off to a forensic tech specialist who owed him an off-the-record favor, then put in several less-than-congenial calls to Johns Hopkins. After rushing a few bewildered teaching assistants to round up phone numbers and email addresses for students in a Dr. Shafer’s  _ Psychology of Desire,  _ he set up a few impromptu meetings and called in a favor with Baltimore’s chief to send a pack of uniforms to campus with emailed pictures of Will Graham. 

 

All there was to do was wait. He sank into Graham’s chair and dug aimlessly through his desk drawers, turning up nothing of note. He drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair and stared blankly at the desk phone, awaiting a call. 

 

_ His phone.  _

 

Jack scooped it up, not the least bit surprised that Will hadn’t bothered to enable any security features of note. He checked his recent calls; the last one was, indeed, to an office at Johns Hopkins. When he opened Will’s text messages, a blinking cursor first caught his attention; he realized Will had been in the middle of writing. 

 

_ you have to know i’m going crazy without touching myself...wish you had fucked me _

 

Jack dropped Will’s phone with a start, whipped around wide-eyed to make sure nobody had seen, then snatched it up and laid it flat on his desk, face-down. 

 

By the time the Baltimore police called him back to confirm Will had, in fact, been at Johns Hopkins the night before during the estimated time of death, Jack had developed an entirely new theory of what Will was hiding. When he went back to the interrogation room to release Will with his apologies, he aggressively avoided eye contact.

 

“I’d — uh — I’d appreciate it if you went home early today, Will. Maybe take a couple days off until we figure out where this case is going. I’ll update you when I can.”

 

“Whatever you say, Jack. Call me if you need me. You know how I feel about this case...obviously,” Will rubbed his neck one more time in an effort to garner Jack’s sympathy. He knew Jack wouldn’t call him back for this case, and Will was glad of it. For him, the case had ended in Hannibal's study.

 

\---

 

A note waited for Will at home, affixed neatly to his doorknob by a courier service.

 

He stood on his porch in the cold afternoon sunlight and huffed steam as he broke the seal, as though there were any question of what it said or who it came from.

 

_ Dr. Hannibal Lecter requests the honor of your presence at his home Saturday evening… _

 

Will tucked the invitation into his breast pocket and shouldered inside to a welcoming swarm of dogs. 

  
He didn’t need to RSVP. 


	8. hachi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will goes to Hannibal's house for their promised dinner engagement. Dinner is served...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys are the most patient readers in the world! As promised, the main body of this fic came to an end with a bang. Hopefully we delivered with this chapter!
> 
> We hope you guys don't get tired of all the dinner scenes we write. Admittedly, there are a lot of them and I doubt we will ever stop.
> 
> Kigakan marks the beginning of a series of fics we're writing as a collection. So if you like the dynamic of Will and Hannibal in this one, stay tuned and read the other fics that will join this collection.
> 
> ***EDIT*** We decided to ditch the epilogue we had planned for this fic. The content for it ended up bridging a gap in our next fic more appropriately. So bad news, Kigakan is finished with Ch. 8. Good news, we've already started on the next fic in this series! So yay! A little cause for celebration.
> 
> PS. Since we decided to add to the Kigakan universe, I lied when I said Beverly was dead in this world. She will be making appearances in the future fics of this collection. Just pretend she's deposed in court. That's how they handle her absence in the show...(we <3 Bev Katz!)
> 
> PPS. If anybody wants to make art for this beautiful table set...I mean...I'm just throwing it out there.

On Saturday morning, Will sent a text to Hannibal saying that he would arrive at Hannibal’s at 7:00. He took it they were in tacit agreement when Hannibal did not call him back to suggest a different time.

 

He hung the shirt that Hannibal had gifted him next to his sink while he took his shower so the steam would loosen any wrinkles that may have formed since the last time he wore it. When he showered this time, he noticed he had been neglecting to shave for the past few days. He considered not using aftershave, but reconsidered when he realized how much shaving he actually had to do.

 

Once that was finished and he was mostly dry, he buttoned up his shirt and rifled through his closet to find his most well-fit suit. It was light grey without any ornamentation, but it was clean and less offensive than what he usually lectured in. He chose not to wear a tie and tried both black dress shoes and mahogany brown ones before settling on the brown.

 

It was still cold enough to wear an overcoat, so he shrugged into one at the front door and wrapped his scarf around his neck before turning on the lights and locking the dogs inside.

 

Upon arriving in Baltimore, he found he had some extra time. This time, he had a better sense of what to do with it, and cruised by the various wine boutiques his phone suggested until he found one that looked less seedy than the rest.

 

“Excuse me?” Will made a short trek from the door to the saleswoman at the back counter.

 

“Yes, sir?” she replied warmly.

 

“I’m heading to a dinner party and I was wondering,” Will turned a few bottles on the shelves around idly, “I wondered if you could help me find something to go with fish.” Hannibal had been at the docks to find Sawada. Logic dictated that he would prepare fish for one course or another.

 

“Of course. Do you have any specifications?” the saleswoman looked Will up and down, clearly trying to gauge his price range but failing spectacularly because of the mismatch of his clothing. His shoes were nice because even before he met Hannibal he knew that shoes should be something you spent money on. His shirt was nice as well for obvious reasons, but his suit and coat were clearly well-worn and less elevated.

 

“Above 50, below 150, so long as the quality meets the price. Whatever’s best in that range,” it didn’t bother him that she sized him up financially; he was used to it.

 

“I have the perfect Chenin Blanc. A 2007 Savennières-Coulée de Serrant from Clos de la Coulée de Serrant,” the cadence of her French was delightfully buoyant, “I’ll get it from the back. It’s been aging in the bottle and this should be the best time for it. You’ll drink it right away, yes?”

 

Will smiled gently at her, “Yeah, I think so. If not, I’ll tell him to drink it a-sap. Thank you. You can just ring it up. I trust you know better than I would.”

 

She gift wrapped the bottle without being asked, and Will returned to his car with his purchase in hand. He made the final leg of his drive to Hannibal’s house and parked in the driveway. In the driver’s seat he inhaled a deep breath through his nose, staring into the warm lights of the windows up ahead. Inside Hannibal was likely putting the finishing touches on dessert, prepared and composed man that he was; Will wondered where he found the time, amongst all his meticulous planning, to tenderly sketch his glans on a sheet of lecture notes.

 

Will wondered if he would have a better reference before the night was out. A thrill raced up his spine, inducing a shudder. Wine in hand, he approached Hannibal’s door.

 

\---

 

The kitchen was warm with steam and smelled of heavy spices. Hannibal stood in his dress shirt, waistcoat, and tie with his half-apron secured around him. He regarded Will’s gift with a grateful smile, and placed it in a marble bucket to chill.

 

“What’s on the menu?” Will asked, leaning on the bar while Hannibal agitated a heap of pecans in a skillet. “Anything I could help with?”

 

“You could, in fact,” Hannibal answered, “try this, and tell me what it needs.”

 

He lifted the lid from a heavy braising pot and scooped up a spoonful of fragrant corn mash dotted with peppers and golden-caramelized onions. He held it out with a palm braced underneath. It took a moment for Will to realize he was meant to open his mouth, and even when he did, he approached tentatively withdrawing once before letting Hannibal feed him.

 

Will parted his lips slowly with his eyes fixed on Hannibal’s. The warm bowl of the spoon met his tongue and Hannibal slid it out without so much as a click of teeth; Will moaned around the faintly spicy morsel in his mouth.

 

“Maque choux,” he said, swallowing, “it’s great.”

 

“Oh yes?”

 

“Mm. Haven’t had anything that tastes like it since I left Louisiana.”

 

Hannibal seemed pleased and went on to further flesh out the night’s menu, “With the maque choux we will have broiled lemon sole, braised okra and a chicory-fennel salad with a satsuma orange vinaigrette and candied pecans.”

 

“You must’ve been slaving over the stove all day,” Will sighed, “smells good.”

 

“Cajun food is pleasantly low-maintenance,” Hannibal assured him, “as you likely know.”

 

“Sleep in yesterday?” Will quirked a brow and was curious to see how Hannibal would respond.

 

A minute pause signaled Hannibal’s comprehension. Will thought he saw him smile to himself as he tossed his pecans with smoked paprika.

 

“A bit. Speaking of the week, how were my students?”

 

“Unremarkable,” Will said flatly. “Your notes, however…” In the back of his mind, Will felt he still had a score to settle for this and for the night spent grinding in Hannibal’s office.

 

“I hope they weren’t rude.”

 

“The notes or the students?”

 

“Whichever you like.”

 

Will breathed a low chuckle and felt heat rising in him. “The kids were fine.”

 

“I’m glad to hear it.”

 

Hannibal washed his hands and produced a pair of wine glasses and poured each of them a generous amount, drying the neck of the bottle with a well-practiced twist of a hand towel. Will watched his fist flex around it and then release, and hid his face in his glass.

 

“Expert choice, Will,” Hannibal complimented him, savoring a taste, “perfect for the meal.”

 

“I suspected you might prepare fish.”

 

“A lucky guess.”

 

Will grinned. “Luck had nothing to do with it, Doctor.”

 

With the last touches made to the meal Hannibal plated their dishes and began ferrying them into the dining room, where the places were already set.

 

The table was decorated with branches of plum blossoms entwined with blossoming magnolias; mixed among them were, so far as Will could determine, delicate bird skulls and gold-leafed fish skeletons. Hannibal served their salads undressed, with twin decanters of olive oil and orange vinaigrette nestled among the petals and bones.

 

He returned to the kitchen for the wine, and Will took his seat, waiting. When Hannibal returned he had removed his apron and donned his jacket, which he unbuttoned deftly as he assumed his place at the head of the table.

 

“Well then,” Hannibal invited, “bon appetit.”

 

Will used the oil sparingly, but drizzled the vinaigrette much more generously over his salad.

 

“I’ve got some time off of work, it seems,” Will quipped jovially. “So, work’s...you know.”

 

“It seems you were due for a break,” Hannibal replied. He watched Will with unreserved interest as he bit into his salad.

 

Will made sure to spear each of the components with every forkful, “Didn’t teach your material. Sorry about that. You might have to change your exam accordingly.”

 

“Mm,” Hannibal acknowledged, “I had planned fairly broad essay questions. Pray, what did you teach instead?”

 

“What I teach best,” Will took a skull from the arrangement and held it out in front of him. “Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him well…” then replaced it in its nest of foliage. He cracked his knuckles and took his fork up again, “I mean murder, not literature,” in case the joke fell flat.

 

“Any one in particular?” Hannibal asked lightly, as though discussing a mutual acquaintance. “One I might know?”

 

“You know many of them, but no,” Will splashed a little more dressing on his salad as he made his way to the bottom, “I didn’t think any of them would be appropriate for the class. The one I chose was from before you knew me. It was an example from my homicide days.”

 

“I wonder about your life before we met,” Hannibal said, turning the thought over in his head. “Prior to our getting to know one another, did you...enjoy the same pursuits?”

 

“Yes and no,” Will folded his hands in his lap over his napkin and waited for Hannibal to finish his salad. “Yes, I’ve always had the same hobbies…” _but no, I’ve never been pursued like this_ remained unsaid.

 

Hannibal nodded, a warm glint of recognition settling in his eyes. “Well then,” he said, “taking your history into account, I hope you’ll tell me honestly if my efforts here match up to your experiences in Louisiana.”

 

He stood and took up their salad plates, returning shortly with their entrees, which he introduced once more as he placed Will’s before him.

 

“Lemon sole is really no sole at all,” he narrated, “but a flounder, often called winter flounder elsewhere, but lemon sole in the Americas. Here, blackened, with cayenne and paprika.”

 

Will waited for Hannibal to return to his own seat before gently pulling a piece away from the rest of the fish and watching it flake delicately. He smelled the steam that rose and looked into Hannibal’s eyes as he brought the first forkful to his mouth. As he chewed, he thought back to the days he spent slumming it in a lonely apartment above a bar in New Orleans.

 

“I imagine this is better than anything I could find in Louisiana. Though I’d have to admit, I wasn’t really one for fine dining at the time,” Will took a sip of the wine and found the marriage of flavors to be as pleasing as he had hoped.

 

Hannibal hummed a regretful sound. “Such a pity, to live in New Orleans and not avail oneself of every pleasure. On a visit some years ago I found company with a young frenchman in Jackson Square and dined...of course, I admit I prefer this as well.”

 

He offered Will a subtle, private smile, but his gaze fixed on him with pointed heat.

 

Will coughed into a closed fist and knew he would be showing red at the tops of his cheeks, “This is more my speed.” He chose to ignore the implications of Hannibal’s account.

 

“I’m very glad it suits you,” Hannibal replied, preening. His eyes seemed to settle on Will’s throat, catching the pure white just between the points of his collar. “I must suit you alright,” he added, with a slight gesture toward Will’s shirt.

 

Will’s gaze flickered down to where Hannibal was gesturing and then back to his dinner. “Figured you’d catch on to my failings if I wore everything from the exhibition.”

 

“Not at all,” Hannibal assured him, “not at all…” He reflected on the sketch he’d made of Will as Sebastian; the resemblance was remarkable, though Hannibal supposed it would take a fuller drape of fabric to clothe Will. He had seen him compromised enough to be favorably informed of his proportions.

 

After a few long moments of thoughtful silence Hannibal laid his fork down and waited for Will to show signs of having finished his entree as well; when he did, Hannibal rose and took his plate in hand. But as he considered picking up Will’s he wondered if the shirt might still carry notes of Hannibal’s own cologne from the kiss they had shared on Will’s porch.

 

He leaned over Will’s shoulder with a murmur of apology, then lifted his plate with the tips of his fingers as he craned his neck to get nearer to Will’s collar, his lips close enough to the soft skin of his throat to sense his body heat. Hannibal breathed in, drawing up, and somehow in rising brushed Will’s cheek with the tip of his nose.

 

“Pardon,” he breathed, chagrined with himself.

 

Will’s reflexes were even quicker than Hannibal was prepared for. With no regard for the plates balanced in Hannibal’s hands, Will reached back and grabbed Hannibal’s tie beneath the knot.

 

He kept his grip firm and kicked his chair out to the side as he turned around and sat himself on the edge of the dining room table. Will used his legs to pull Hannibal’s body flush up between his thighs and yanked at the back tab of the tie to tighten it around Hannibal’s neck as he leaned in to whisper, “No pardon necessary…”

 

Hannibal’s adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, and his tongue darted out to wet his lower lip. He let the plates settle back on the surface of the table and just caught Will’s jostled wineglass, steadying it and sliding it out of danger by the base.

 

“Will,” he breathed, “upstairs, shall we?”

 

Upstairs seemed very far away to Will in the moment, and a darker part of himself relished the idea of ruining Hannibal’s dinner spread. His eyes drifted to the plates finding their way back to the table, and he decided it was in Hannibal’s best interests as well when he hotly replied, “No. Do it here.”

 

Will wrestled out of his jacket and began working the buttons of Hannibal’s waistcoat free from their fastenings. He yanked Hannibal’s shirttails loose and kissed aggressively into a receptive mouth.

 

Hannibal shrugged easily out of his jacket and slung it over Will’s displaced chair, still not entirely convinced they would finish here, and yet — when Will’s fingers found the stiffening length of his sex through his slacks he growled into their kiss, resolve vastly diminished. He freed the buttons of Will’s shirt in an easy pull, then spread the fabric back to his shoulders and raked his hands down the other’s naked flanks, squeezing when he came to his hips.

 

“Protection?” he asked.

 

“No,” Will grunted.

 

“Never?”

 

“Does it really matter? Just wanna know what you feel like when you come inside me...” Will brought both hands up to hold Hannibal’s face between them. He bit at Hannibal’s bottom lip and pulled a little as he ground his hips upwards against Hannibal’s filling erection.

 

A jolt of arousal swept through Hannibal and all his senses heightened; Will wanted to feel him coming inside, and the thought had him surging against him, licking deep into his mouth as he worked his shirt down and off, dropped thoughtlessly to the floor. He worked open Will’s belt buckle without ever surrendering his mouth, whipped it out of its loops and then yanked his slacks open with a practiced but rough tug.

 

“Up,” he hissed, lifting him just enough to divest him of his pants and underwear. His hand found Will’s cock, thickening and heavy, and squeezed; he sucked his throat for the vibrations in it and glanced between them when he could, admiring the slim body like a Renaissance saint’s, toned and scarred and desperately wanting.

 

“I didn’t tell you not to come,” Will moaned and shimmied his pants down his legs. “Did you?” Will leaned back as he waited for Hannibal’s answer, wanting to see the shade and clarity of his eyes.

 

“I waited for you,” Hannibal replied thickly. His palm slid up to cradle Will’s cheek not for the first time. “You’ve thought of this, hm?” There seemed to be very little question in it; in fact there was little inflection at all: Hannibal’s voice had grown raspy and low, his accent heavier. Out of the corner of his eye he caught a glint of light on the oil decanter; that would have to do. He plucked it up and placed it near them, then leaned in close, close enough to claim Will’s mouth again, and leaned down to sweep plates and glasses and silver and flowers to the floor with one grand gesture of his arm followed by a shattering symphony.

 

“Lay back,” he commanded with Will’s hips framed between his hands.

 

Will winced as he heard what had to be hundreds of dollars worth of finery in ruin. He looked behind himself as Hannibal commanded him to recline. The wine glass was still there. Will took it in his hand and tossed it to the growing pile of shards at the feet of Hannibal’s favored Boucher painting.

 

“I had a dream -- celtic, pagan mess of a thing...tied to a marble slab in the middle of a black forest. Almost fucked open by a man with stag’s horns.” He pulled Hannibal closer by his tie before finally loosening it and pulling it free from around his throat. His eyes regarded Hannibal with a fervor akin to worship and devotion, “Didn’t finish though...even my dreams conspire against me when it comes to you.”

 

With Hannibal’s tie gone his shirt fell open; somewhere in their clash Will had managed to muss his hair, and a few strands now hung loose. Hannibal laid him back slowly, watching Will’s face as the FBI profiler revisited the contours of his dream. What he saw in Will’s expression was foreign. It suddenly occurred to Hannibal, through a dense haze of sensation, that this was different, this was new: he had never killed for someone else before. Nobody else had ever asked, because nobody else had ever seen him for what he was and come closer.

 

He poured oil into his palm and warmed it in his hands before spreading his fingers over Will’s sac, lifting and easing beneath, smoothing over his entrance in long, easy strokes.

 

“You know what I am,” he murmured, watching Will’s lips as his vision narrowed only to him. Love ached in his chest, tight and insistent.

 

“I know what you are,” Will encouraged the hand that touched him by rubbing a circle with his thumb at the crook of Hannibal’s elbow through the thin material of his wrinkling shirt.

 

Then he licked his lips and tilted his head to the side where it lay on white linen tablecloth, “You know me too. How does that feel?” Will kicked his shoes and socks off so that he could remove his pants fully. He laughed when they got stuck rolled up at his ankles. Hannibal had to smooth his hands down the length of Will’s thighs and calves to free him, and then he was entirely naked, and Hannibal stood back to survey him.

 

“It feels sublime,” he said, entirely earnest; even the word felt foreign as his English retreated. But it was the right one: beautiful and vast, almost frightening; a holy terror. His fingers found Will’s entrance again, newly wet with oil, and Hannibal leaned over him to suck dark blossoms into his neck as he coaxed him open.

 

Will shifted his hips and brought the arch of one foot to the edge of the table to make it easier for Hannibal to nudge into him. He rolled his head back to expose his neck and felt the scrape of a sharp canine against the protrusion of his throat.

 

“Step back a bit,” he instructed as his hands threaded behind the one Hannibal was using to work at his hole. Without looking down, Will undid the closure of Hannibal’s pants. He could only push them halfway down Hannibal’s hips before he had to ask for help, “Get that for me, yeah?”

 

Hannibal assented, shedding his shirt and stepping out of the remainder of his clothes with an easy motion, then standing before Will naked and unashamed. He palmed his erection curiously — he was harder than he had been in a long while, possibly ever, he thought; he could feel the thrum of his blood and a tense, urgent ache.

 

A fat bead of fluid gathered at the tip and smeared along Will’s thigh as he moved close again, leaning down over him to pin both wrists temporarily above his head as he sucked at his lips. He released one hand and returned to his work between Will’s thighs, easing soothingly along his rim and then pressing in slow, a little further each time until he had sheathed his middle finger inside.

 

Part of Will wanted to alert Hannibal to the fact that he hadn’t been penetrated by anything more than the occasional finger in almost a decade, but he kept the information to himself. It would probably become fairly obvious with the heaviness of Will’s breathing and the tightness of the muscles Hannibal could feel himself.

 

“Relax, Will,” he soothed, “try.” The second finger was easier than the first, whether due to his command or Will’s own physiology, he couldn’t know. Hannibal turned his wrist experimentally, feeling along inside him for any telling feature, namely scar tissue; but all seemed to be right with him, hot, smooth, and slickening with each advance of Hannibal’s fingers.

 

Will jerked when a fingertip nudged his prostate; the sudden motion caught Hannibal’s attention, alighting his gaze on the flushed red tip of Will’s estimably sized cock.

 

“One more, I think,” he promised, wrapping his hand around Will as he added a third finger. The stretch was tighter now, pressing his knuckles hard together, and he gave him long, deep strokes to ease the pain.

 

“Flowers…” Will blurted out as he attempted to distract himself from the sharp sting of Hannibal’s knuckles breaching his body. He laughed airily when Hannibal looked quizzically at him and the adrenaline began to make him feel artificially giddy. “You probably know them as _ume_? Don’t look — mm, surprised, I had the time to do some research once Jack benched me.”

 

Will allowed his one leg to slip down from the table and crossed his ankles loosely at the back of Hannibal’s calves. It made him squeeze tighter around Hannibal’s fingers, but he felt more at ease with his body stretched out to its full length.

 

“Plum blossoms,” Will began again as his body gently rose and fell with the movement of Hannibal’s wrist like a pebble on the edge of an ocean tide, “they begin blooming in late winter. But I read that to the Japanese, they signify early spring.”

 

“He would have continued into early spring and stopped...” Will pulled himself up by Hannibal’s shoulders and poured some of the oil in his own palm. He unhooked his ankles and leaned forward to take Hannibal’s uncut erection in hand. Will leveled a glassy blue gaze on Hannibal and was satisfied to see some color in the other man’s cheeks. He circled the pad of his oiled thumb over the sensitive glans, kneading at his retracted foreskin, “...until next year when the plum blossoms began to bloom and the killing season came to fruit again.”

 

“He did say something to that effect,” Hannibal managed through a groan. He and Sawada had discussed the old man’s tattoos in the moments leading up to his demise. But those hours down in the sealed tunnels by the riverside seemed so distant now, so damp and icy, and Will was hot and vibrant all around him.

 

Will’s fingers on his cock felt divine; Hannibal let his head drop back and his hips jut into Will’s grip, the slit leaking steadily.

 

“Do you feel ready now, Will?”

 

“You really think you can wait if I’m not?” Will tapped playfully at the tip of Hannibal’s erection with his index finger. He pulled his hips as close to the edge of the table as possible and wrapped his legs around Hannibal’s hips for balance. Then he reclined on the table again and rolled his shoulders until his shoulderblades rested as comfortably against the hard table as they would.

 

From his position on the table, Will looked up at the ceiling for a moment -- at the chandelier above him -- and then at the wall behind Hannibal where Leda hung in her frame reposed in much the same fashion as Will. He pushed Hannibal’s hand away from his entrance and brought it instead to his tense thigh.

 

Hannibal felt the cool air on his fingers once he withdrew them; the contrast was sharp, as Will’s body had warmed him up to the webbing of his hands. He held him underneath each thigh, just at the knee, spreading Will’s thighs open and pulling him up so that the angle would draw him over Will’s gland like a bow over taut strings.

 

“It’s ready...don’t - don’t jerk me off. Don’t need it…” Will wasn’t entirely sure he would come from the fucking alone, but he hadn’t come in the better part of a week and had a good idea he might.

 

Hannibal dropped a hand to align himself with Will and then took up his thigh again when he felt the smooth head of his cock slip past the first press of resistance. A look of tense concentration knitted his brows as he speared into Will slowly, little by little, sweat forming a sheen on his naked shoulders.

 

An abrupt sigh escaped him once he was fully sheathed; he didn’t know he had been holding it in, and once he began to breathe he was panting, forcing himself into an uncomfortable stillness as he allowed Will to adjust.

 

“Move…” Will didn’t see any reason to be shy with all of Hannibal’s dick shoved tightly into his body.

 

Hannibal bent over his body with an indulgent smile and brushed Will’s hair back to kiss his forehead. When Hannibal began to move, Will inhaled sharply through his nose and wrapped his legs tighter around Hannibal’s body.

 

Will didn’t remember his days of casual hookups in New Orleans with any particular fondness, and his memory had mostly failed him over the past few days spent imagining how Hannibal would fuck.

 

He wanted to curl up and wind himself snug around Hannibal’s body, but he fought the impulse and remained stretched out for Hannibal to see. Will looked to Hannibal like a sacrifice. He was undulating with every thrust, expressions of pain limited to flickering winces and the occasional gasp.

 

Hannibal’s hands moved from Will’s thighs to his hips, holding them canted up. The table lurched when Hannibal began fucking him in earnest, and the few pieces of flatware still balanced on its surface jostled and fell to the floor with a clatter.

 

“Ah...f-fuck…” the curse was whispered and carried out on a heavy pant as Hannibal set a surprisingly aggressive pace.

 

“Will,” he rasped, and his thumbs went white on the ridges of Will’s hipbones as he held his hips vice-like, angling into his prostate with each stroke.

 

“Yes, god. Right - keep fuck...keep it there,” Will used his legs to limit Hannibal’s range of motion. His back arched as he ground back against Hannibal’s penis. All that remained on the table were a few stray bones and flowers from the centerpiece as well and the salad dressing and oil. Will began to chuckle and licked his lips while commenting, “You’ve had so many...mmmmm...so many guests at this table. From now on...hmmm...gonna be hard to - to eat here.”

 

“Hard?” Hannibal huffed a breath that may have been a laugh were his oxygen not all being marshalled to keep his hips pumping into Will against the tight hold of his thighs. “It will be — all the more —”

 

He plunged deep, back bowing, holding the tight angle against Will’s prostate where he needed it. With every shudder he drew closer; he could feel his orgasm closing in, a volatile pressure building and pleasure reaching a crescendo — he would finish inside Will, and he told him as much through his teeth.

 

Will moaned wantonly as Hannibal pushed him to his climax. It happened sloppily without any kisses and few sweet nothings; he kept his eyes squeezed shut while dotted multi-colored lights flashed behind his lids and Hannibal continued to seek his own finish. His body continued to convulse in prolonged spurts of orgasm and he whimpered softly as Hannibal chose now to handle Will’s spent cock. Most likely, he thought vaguely, his whole body would feel sore and wrung out immediately when the afterglow faded…

 

Hannibal came hard with a start, giving a throaty moan that faded into a hiss as he bucked once, twice more into Will. When he withdrew he was still dizzy and buzzing with pleasure, sounds around him just returning to their normal volume. He could smell his semen seeping from Will as he withdrew.

 

“Do you always come like that?” he asked, still breathless and husky. But that look of surgical curiosity had returned to his eyes, bright and inquisitive.

 

Will furrowed his brow and crossed his arms over his eyes while he worked at regaining his breath. His chest was still expanding and contracting with the urgency of someone thoroughly winded.

 

Once Will felt he could answer without stuttered speech, he folded his hands across his chest, “In a general sense, I guess. But the nice and true thing to say is that this was particularly intense.” As an afterthought, he released Hannibal from the hold of his legs and ran a finger through the mess that had gathered at the base of Hannibal’s cock.

 

Hannibal calculated roughly in his head. It must have lasted more than a minute, perhaps a minute and twenty seconds, maybe thirty...Depending on the exact number, that meant Will’s orgasms lasted roughly three to four times as long as average. Hannibal promised himself he would use a stopwatch and time it eventually.

 

“It was, wasn’t it?” he said at last, lifting Will to his feet with a gentle embrace. He brought the other’s forehead to his shoulder and cradled him for a moment, almost soothing. “Quite a mess we’ve made here. Won’t be made any worse by leaving it for tomorrow. Let’s get you to bed, hm?”

 

Will winced as his heels touched the floor. The slight impact sent a shock up to his lower spine, “You seem rather proud of yourself.” He straightened his posture to kiss Hannibal’s lips and walked gingerly towards the doorway that led to the main staircase, careful to avoid all the pointed shards and hard objects littering the floor, “Next time I’ll do away with the niceties. I think it suits me better.”

 

His gait maintained a slight limp, and if he noticed that he was giving himself away, he did not show a sign of it.

  
Hannibal took their clothes over his arm. The dishes and glassware and wine stains he could leave (thank heavens, he thought glibly, it was only a white) but the garments he could not. He caught up with Will about half-way up the stairs and put a hand on his shoulder to steady him, always to steady him.

 


End file.
